Falling: The Story of One Marriage [Hardcover]

John Taylor (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 2, 1999

"We had to help each other bring it to an end. To summon the strength to proceed we would need to reassure each other, to depend on and trust each other. We would have to work together to dissolve the marriage in a way we had never been able to do to sustain it. I saw all this with piercing clarity, and then I thought, But if we are capable of such delicate and complicated collaboration, maybe we should stay together after all."

In Falling: The Story of One Marriage, John Taylor portrays the central human struggle—"the competition between [the] need to keep life interesting, to accept its limits, and to give it value"—that lies at the heart of divorce. Writing with moving eloquence and unflinching honesty, he describes the hopeful beginnings of his marriage, its gradual disintegration, and the "horrifying act of will" needed to bring it to an end. He wrestles with the decision to leave his wife and young daughter, and the life they share, and struggles to clarify the nature of his responsibilities as a husband and father. Despite his involvement with other women, and his near certainty that his marriage is not salvageable, he remains profoundly reluctant to remove his wedding ring—even after he has moved out.

Taylor's own story is interwoven with descriptions of the marriages of his family and friends, some faltering, some unaccountably strong. He witnesses the way divorce sweeps through his neighborhood "like a tornado, leveling one house and leaving the next intact." And with great clarity and compassion he explores the question that nearly all adults, married or single, ask themselves at some point: Should I stay or should I go?

A naked, intimate portrait that will strike a deep chord in both men and women, Falling is as much about the shape and texture of a contemporary marriage as it is about its dissolution. Beyond that, it is an account of one man's search for "moral coherence in a world that no longer imposes it." As the author learns that his decisions are often imperfect and that his choices have far-reaching and unanticipated consequences, he gradually discovers the truth about his own moral center.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

"Marriage doesn't just break down," observes Taylor, a distinguished ex-Esquire writer. "We disconnect the life support." To list the Taylors' problems scarcely does justice to his thoughtful account of their doomed 11-year marriage: age difference (he was 26; she, 32), her Parkinson's disease, her alienation after forsaking a writing career for motherhood, his adultery, his panicky consideration of "the Belize option" (if you flee with your assets to dodge alimony, Belize won't extradite).

Mr. and Mrs. Taylor's lovers are vividly sketched. Alex, the most rounded extramarital character, survived a Marseilles orgy ending in a death by coke overdose and became a successful businesswoman bent on marrying Taylor, but wound up with only one steady relationship--with her therapist. The author gets the fullest portrait here. A childhood bouncing around the world from Accra, Ghana, to Yokosuka, Japan, may have predisposed him to domestic change, and his big-headed, big-town milieu was rife with divorce (the wife of Taylor's dad's close friend phoned from a billionaire's jet to say she was taking off with the billionaire--who had been their best man). Taylor skillfully interweaves others' sad tales with his own and with historical evidence from the classic Family, Sex, and Marriage in England 1500-1800. He doesn't solve the quintessential questions, but sheds both warmth and light on the whole emotional roller coaster. And the romantic tunes his wife introduced him to (Songs of the Auvergne and Tous les matins du monde) won't ever stop plucking his heartstrings. --Tim Appelo

From Publishers Weekly

Taylor (Storming the Magic Kingdom) has written an eloquent and deeply felt memoir about the demise of his 11-year marriage. Taylor married his wife when he was 26 and she was 32, after they had been living together for more than a year. Almost immediately their marriage underwent a severe strain when his wife was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease, which made her subsequent pregnancy fraught with anxiety for both of them. Although Taylor was delighted by the birth of his daughter, the years following were marked by a slow but progressive breakdown in communication between husband and wife. Taylor felt that his wife became resentful at her dependency on him, and, as their estrangement grew, he coped by having an affair and later moving out. The couple made several attempts to salvage the marriage for the sake of their daughter, and Taylor sensitively conveys his grief over the failure of these efforts. Clearly, neither Taylor nor his wife embarked on the path of divorce lightly, and Taylor manages to convey the sense of loss he will always feel without sounding sorry for himself. While this is an overwhelmingly personal book, Taylor does take a few well-aimed shots at family-values pundits who decry the "divorce culture" and view divorce as a failure of moral will. "While it requires will to make a marriage work," Taylor writes, "it also requires a horrifying act of will to bring one to an end." Author tour.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 225 pages
• Publisher: Random House; 1st edition (February 2, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0375500944
• ISBN-13: 978-0375500947
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.7 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (22 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,046,204 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Well written, sad, compelling, January 17, 2000

By 

Crepuscular (Chicago, IL United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Falling: The Story of One Marriage (Hardcover)

This book was extremely well written, sad, compelling, and frustrating. Mr. Taylor comes across as very introspective and thoughtful, except in the one critical area of his several extramarital affairs, which, if I was figuring the chronology correctly, began awfully early in his marriage. And if the idea of family was so important to him, as he stresses over and over, why didn't he try to strengthen his marriage and his family by NOT HAVING THE AFFAIRS? It's one thing to give your marriage every possible chance to succeed, and quite another to sabotage it from several angles. Mr. Taylor's character seems to combine admirable qualities of honor and duty with an unawareness of his sizable narcissism--which displays itself in his relationships with his lovers and their husbands as well. What kind of person would agree to be introduced to his lover's unknowing husband? This is an act either of cruelty, or completely oblivious narcissism.

The author's wife, though thinly sketched, seemed true to life, as my opinion of her wavered between sympathetic and unsympathetic. She felt limited and frustrated by her at-home-mother role, yet resisted finding full time work, and ultimately demanded lifetime financial maintenance from the author. I found myself wondering if the author had published this book in order to keep up his alimony payments.

In the interests of fairness, I don't mean to condemn the author simply for failing at marriage. I can't fault someone for entering into a union with more hope than realism; and after all, no one can see into the future. I guess all you can do is know yourself, and know the other person as best you can, and try your hardest. But it certainly seems that our tolerance for struggle, difficulty, and discontent has never been lower.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Taylor's book is much more his story than that of a marriage, July 13, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Falling: The Story of One Marriage (Hardcover)

Taylor's book is much more his story than that of a marriage. We are privy to a great deal of his own critical self evaluation, yet we learn very little about his marriage. Taylor deserves credit for his indepth and insightful commentary on his own thinking over the course of a marriage. He is a man trying to make sense of vast confrontations between parts of himself. But the novel falls short of offering any inexorable truths about marriage, other than not to repeat the sins of the author. At times we question the very character of the author, a self serving egoist who has very little to say about the people in his life other than to tell us about their sophisticated jobs, travel schedules, and their favorite drinks. Did the author ever get past the superficial with anyone, let alone his wife? He doesn't seem to have a real relationship with anyone. Should we be surprised when it doesn't develop with his wife? If a reader wants to learn about much of what is wrong with modern marriage, Falling is an excellent and penetrating example, even if the writer doesn't see it himself. However, if readers are looking to gain insight on what the story of a good marriage might look like, they should look elsewhere. May I recommend Sheldon Vaunauken's masterful love story, A Severe Mercy, to those of you who would like to walk away from a story of marriage feeling more than saddened by the writer's failed understanding of the institution he was so interested in writing about.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Honest and Brutal look at one Marriage, December 2, 2004

By 

Robert S. Rosolanko "Phillies Phan" (West Chester, PA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Falling: The Story of One Marriage (Hardcover)

After having read the book, then read some of the reviews, I was suprised at how outraged some people were at this story. This is probably the most realistic viewpoint about a relationship that I have read in a long time. Does that mean that every man cheats on his wife? No. Does that mean that every woman wants "maintennance" for the rest of her life? No. What it does mean is that sometimes people make mistakes (in this case, several of them), but they must go on. Granted, there were several times where I found myself angry at the author for his actions, but who am I to judge someone elses misfortunes, when we all have skeletons in our closet.