Fictional Matrimony

[sartorias]

Father’s Day is one holiday that definitely embraces the married man. I was thinking about that switch from prowling single guy to paterfamilias the other day, after I found the sequel to a novel I’d enjoyed

Comments

[merebrillante]

Not so much in the one book that was written, but in the many movies that featured them: Nick & Nora Charles.

Why did I like them so much?

Part of the reason may have been because I never saw them while they were courting. Think of all the TV series that have been ruined by getting the couple together at last -- Moonlighting, Cheers, etc. I don't think Beatrice and Benedick would have been as interesting after they got married as they were before the ceremony

[justinelavaworm]

Yes, to Nick and Nora. Though I love the book more than the films.

I can't think of any others. Wow, that's terrible. I can think of excellent books about marriages, but they're about marriages falling apart.

Can't wait to see what other lj folk come up with.

[sartorias]

I've got to read the books. I adore the earlier films--and yes, I agree about them.

[justinelavaworm]

It's just the one book. Mr Hammett never deigned to write a sequel to The Thin Man. Worse luck!

I think the relationship between Nick & Nora is a bit more equal in the book than it is in the films where he's always a tad patronising towards Nora.

[padawansguide]

I enjoy the Elizabeth Peters "Amelia Peabody" books - I think in the beginning of the series she handles Amelia and Emerson becoming a married couple quite well. They are the fun, arguing but loving kind of couple. I enjoy reading about them anyway!

I'm sure I could think of other examples, but I'm tired and nothing is coming to me! :-)

It definitely seems to be a problem for writers to know what to do once they have characters finally get together. I think it's possible to have the relationship still be interesting, but I think it takes a better-than-average writer. You see it all the time on TV - you have two really good characters with a lot of tension - and then you get them together, and the writers don't know what to do and the characters get really uninteresting.

I look forward to reading whatever it is that is coming out next year! While they weren't married, or even really together, I very much enjoyed the relationship between your characters in Crown Duel. :-)

[torrilin]

Yeah, Elizabeth Peters does married very well. I cherish Voyager by Diana Gabaldon because the author does married very well.

I think a lot of authors are uncomfortable with married couples because it isn't obviously exciting. Thing is, with a married couple (assuming you're not planning on them having Serious Relationship Issues), you have 2 major characters who mostly get along, and have similar goals, and can disagree without it being the End Of The World. This is a bad thing if you're trying to write about courtship. It's a *good* thing if you're trying to write about the rest of life. How many novels have trouble because the author can't figure out how to get all the characters on the same page and pointed towards the same goals?

[sartorias]

Haven't read the Amanda Peabody books--I must!

[torrilin]

They're worth the time :). The earlier ones are very overt riffs on Victorian/Edwardian adventure stories, and that put me off them for a time since I tried to read them in order. If the adventure ripoff puts you off, skip the earlier ones and start off with random ones at the tail end of the series (The Ape That Guards the Balance and copyright dates after). I found that trick made it clearer that the author is *deliberately* poking fun at stories she rather likes, instead of having characters be foolish for no good reason.

(the early ones have only Amelia as narrator, the later ones have multiple POV characters, who don't always share Amelia's taste for lurid adventure novels)

[mildmannered]

I've always wanted to read a novel involving Jane Eyre and Mr. Rochester moving to the year 2056 and opening a detective agency.

[merebrillante]

Together ... they fight crime!

[sartorias]

*snort!*

[eegatland]

It's called Busman's Honeymoon (ahahahahahaha)

[twisting_path]

Nick and Nora have already been brought up. How I loved them!

Faye kellerman writes a very good married couple in her Peter Decker mystery series. Let's see... there are several other mystery couples that come to mind.

In most of the ones that I really like, either the courtship is fast and furious then wham, marriage, and not part of the main plot (not a romance) or the couple is already married from the get-go. I personally love a strong married couple, and the mystery series I am chugging away on (a history mystery) will have such a couple. My first series had a couple heading that direction, but my publisher has piffed into the wind, and the second still sits here, waiting... Sigh.

Great question though! And timely to me. I'm looking forward to reading the answers.

[djonn]

Mystery has many more married leads than SF/F does, I think; this is undoubtedly due in large part to genre and marketing conventions. A successful mystery series is likely to run anywhere from six volumes to a dozen or more, but plot considerations usually dictate that the protagonist and SO marry (or split) within the first three books. Laurie King is one mystery writer that seems to do the married stage particularly well, both in her Mary Russell and Kate Martinelli series.

By contrast, genre SF/F tends to be constructed such that weddings happen mostly at the end of a book or series -- or, if an author continues working in the series universe, subsequent volumes will shift focus to new leads, and the married characters appear only briefly if at all.

[alethea_eastrid]

I second the Laure King comment, particuarly the Mary Russell books. While I have introduced those to people who didn't like them (*boggle*), I think they're fabulous, and the relationship very well done.

[cassiphone]

I really like the portrayal of the couple in the TV series Medium - they have some genuine frustrations with each other, both are sometimes thoughtless or selfish. When they fight it's for a reason, and there are times it looks like the relationship is stretching thin... but they love each other, and they love their kids, and they manage.

It's not happy ever after because love conquers all... they cope, as people do. Being together is better than being apart. And when things work, you see genuine chemistry like they really have been together for 15 years.

[justinelavaworm]

I can come up with a lot more TV examples than I can book ones. (Shame on me.) Y'know like Hart to Hart etc. Even The Brady Bunch . . .

[sartorias]

My daughter has been watching that one--I told her I'd watch it with her in June, when my school-year TV embargo is lifted.