Marriage: A Duet
 Anne Taylor Fleming
 (Reviewed by The Editor - Rebecca Brown)
 2003 Hyperion Books
 ISBN: 0786868740
 

Two Novellas offer unique perspectives on infidelity.

Marriage: A Duet is not simply about infidelity, as the book jacket declaims, it is about marriages, both longterm & fairly fresh.

A Married Woman opens with an adult brother & sister on the telephone pondering on how weird their mother has become. Caroline Betts is holding vigil at her husband's bedside as he lies comatose in hospital. She is remembering her 40 year marriage, & she is dyeing her hair in the hospital bathroom, which sets her children on edge.

In the second novella: A Married Man has a husband & wife talking in that peculiar way married couples have of trying not to listen to each other while exchanging relationship-defining information. The dialogue between spouses is dense with denial & frustration. The proposal being bartered is that they see a marriage counsellor.

These are well-written stories of how people within their marriages cope with betrayal: how an older wife remembers her husband's earlier affair & how she dreams of her own, & how a young husband reacts to learning his wife has been unfaithful (which she didn't mean to do & which doesn't make him feel any better). As he struggles with his feelings, & his dependence on substances, his need for revenge is rampant.

For readers who relish the complexities of people making a life together, the dialogues ring true (even if they drove me crazy!) & the situations are both delicately funny & seriously telling.

Anyone who has been espoused will know of what this author writes, & will find some interesting information to take back to their marriage, not the least of which is that beating about the bush is exhausting & gets you going in circles, while straight talk is relieving & really works, & sometimes, doing nothing is everything.

Anne Taylor Fleming is a commentator for CNN & The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, this is her fiction debut.

More from Anne Taylor Fleming:
Motherhood Deferred: A Woman's Journey
(06/29/03)

Rebecca