Customer Reviews

A Happy Marriage: A Novel (Library Edition)

5 star:		(63)
4 star:		(22)
3 star:		(12)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

Yglesias's novel is beautifully wrought, with meticulously crafted characters moving through the heartbreaking denouement of a thirty-year romance. Enrique, the protagonist, is saddled with the burden of herding his family through the final days of his wife Margaret's life. In between the episodes of final goodbyes and medical crises, the reader sees how their romance started and how it unfolded through their years of happy marriage.

Of course, it could hardly be happy in the sense of blissfully moving from one joyous moment to the next. They have their problems, including the near dissolution of their marriage in its early years. What makes the reader cheer from the sidelines, even while it is revealed that Enrique had an affair, is the way he desperately wants to tell his wife, at the end of her life, how much he loves her, how much her very existence has made life worth living. His fear, as he coordinates a social calendar of final goodbyes for her friends and family, is that he won't have a chance to tell her. This fear is pervasive, and seeing how these final days unfold make the novel engrossing.

Yglesias employs beautiful turns of phrase throughout the novel, putting words to feelings that many have experienced while dealing with the illness and death of a loved one. Enrique reveals how difficult it is to help other people cope emotionally, when he is trying so hard himself to do that as well: they were "demanding he put Band-Aids on their scrapes while he was bleeding to death" (88). Enrique deals with the demands of family, particularly Margaret's parents concern with funeral arrangements. In passages like this, Yglesias shines in describing Margaret's mother's need to control the arrangements, to have them just the way her family has always had them, because the need for something familiar would almost make one feel safe in the midst of the uncertainty of a life without Margaret (184).

There are witty passages as well, like Enrique's internal debate about selecting pants to wear on his first date with Margaret (129). Enrique and Margaret are great conversational foils, never devolving into the pattern of saying the same things to each other repeatedly, nor remaining silent because, after all these years, there is nothing left to say. Their relationship is alive and vibrant, and they still can surprise each other when they open their mouths. This is something beautiful to see, and it makes the ending of the novel so hard to bear.

The first chapter didn't draw me in to the novel the way that the second - and each subsequent chapter - did. I do not mention this as a critique, but rather so that readers know that they might not be enthralled on first meeting the characters, but it is worth hanging on for a few more pages to let this story get a running start.

I think the great strength of this novel is the detailed expression of the emotions that swirl around the beginning and end of this marriage. These characters are vibrantly alive, and will remain lodged in my mind for some time now. It is an excellent read, even if it leaves the reader in tears.

This is a difficult book to review in that while billed as a novel - certainly seems to match up with the author's life. The story of Enrique Sabas and his relationship with his wife Margaret seems a close mirror to that of author Rafael Yglesias and his wife Margaret.

So it's impossible to know how much is fiction...but I will try and write this based on what happens in the book.

"A Happy Marriage" - it's a title that I first assumed described a perfect marriage. Instead, it's about a real marriage - full of sorrows and mistakes and flaws and pain. But full of joy and love and miracles as well. It's about the emotional ties between two people who were part of each other's lives for nearly thirty years, and the physical nature of human life and love.

The story is told from Enrique's point of view - and while the reader comes to know Margaret through him, it is only his version of Margaret that we see. The woman he fell in love with, the woman who became the mother to his children, the woman he cared for while she was suffering and dying. We see how his relationship with her changes him, how his knowing of her alters his life forever.

The book follows two timelines - one as Enrique and Margaret meet and one that takes place in the final weeks of Margaret's life. We watch them come together and we see as they are separated by her cancer.

"He didn't think about her dead; he didn't contemplate a future without Margaret. He understood that she would die, and die soon, but he also knew that he didn't truly believe her life would end."

As we watch the young Enrique become captivated by the young Margaret, we know, as they do not, where their story will end. This knowledge taints even the most joyous moments of their young love and marriage, and makes one want to admonish them during the hardships that "you're wasting precious time!"

Their marriage and feelings for one another go through the inevitable (and some not so predictable) ups and downs, and always the feelings seem real. While as a wife and mother, I come from the other side of the coin; I felt the authenticity of Enrique's feelings about his wife and sons. There is certainly a greater emphasis put on the physical aspects of their relationship than many women might have placed and I found this very illuminating. But there is such love there, such a feeling that without her, there would be no him.

"Enrique finally felt able to explain what she had come to mean in his life. He was ready to articulate that in their twenty-nine years together both of them had been transformed, not once but three times; that he had come not only to need her but to love her more profoundly than ever; not as a trophy to be won, not as a competitor to defeat, not as a habit too long to break, but as a full partner, skin of his skin, head of his heart, and heart of his soul."

I have to admit to being surprised that I did not cry while reading this book. I'm a pretty emotional person, and given that the book is based in reality - I expected to choke up at the very least. But in the end, I think I took more from what these people had than what they lost. Given that when I started the book, I already knew the ending, I suppose I took more from their journey than from its conclusion.

A perfect marriage is unachievable. A happy marriage is a triumph beyond measure.

Brief summary and review, no spoilers:

The story starts off in 1972, when a mutual friend introduces Enrique Sabas to the vivacious and pretty, Margaret Cohen. It was love at first sight for Enrique.

Enrique comes from a rather bohemian family of writers and he too becomes a novelist, dropping out of high school at age 16 to be a published author.

Margaret comes from a more traditional upper middle-class Jewish family and she has always been at odds with her controlling mother. When she meets Enrique he is 21, and she is 3 years older. She has inherited some of her mother's controlling nature.

This book is essentially the story of their relationship - the story of a marriage. The book starts when they first meet and from almost the very beginning (so no spoiler) , we know that it will end over 30 years later with Margaret dying of cancer. And although the title is A Happy Marriage, at times it is anything but that. In many ways this book is a realistic look at the hardships of any marriage, and the difficulties endured by any two different people who share their lives together.

I really enjoyed the way the story is told. It is told in alternating chapters at different points in time. We start off when they first meet, and then hop around a bit in time as we learn what happened during the marriage. The other chapters take place in 2005 when Margaret is dying, and the heartbroken Enrique is there to take care of her and help her end her life on her terms.

This technique really adds an interesting layer to the story, and I really enjoyed the way Yglesias was able to foreshadow events in the novel. It really made this book a page-turner, and I found myself reading and finishing it way too late last night.

I do have just a couple of quibbles. At least for me, I'm not sure I was ever able to really understand their connection - in fact, why they loved and felt so connected to each other. The story fell just short of that for me and I would've liked one key chapter at a therapists office to be resolved. But this may be just me, and it certainly is no reason to not read and fully enjoy this book.

One last quibble, and this is a little one, but Margaret must have been described as having amazing blue/azure/Pacific Ocean eyes a hundred times. Or at least it felt like it. I actually found it distracting after a bit.

Still, I do recommend this novel. I also recommend the author's earlier book, Dr. Neruda's Cure for Evil. That was a page-turner as well, and a great book for book club discussion.

I just finished this book last night, and I'm still feeling a sense of grieving for the loss of Margaret (the wife in the book). I'll admit that I cried over the ending, which wasn't what I expected. The final chapters of her life were written by someone who has obviously watched someone die from cancer, and at times I had to put it down and distance myself. I understand that the author based his novel on his own marriage and the loss of his wife, which makes it seem very personal and almost makes the reader feel like they're eavesdropping.

The book begins with Enrique meeting Margaret. He's neurotic, insecure, and feels that she's unattainable. She's beautiful, vivacious, and is obviously attracted to him, even if he can't see it. He agonizes over what to wear on dates and whether Margaret likes someone else and whether he should push her to sleep with him. Any adult will remember the feeling of butterflies in the stomach and the nervous perspiration that a new romance can cause.

He's written the book in flashbacks, alternating with current events. It was a little off-putting to me, being in the middle of one of their dates, then switching over to her deathbed. But in the end I could see how the end of Margaret's life coincided with their meeting and the "death" of their single years. It all dovetailed nicely, if sadly.

Marriage is a hard job, even for the best matched couples. I feel that this book shows the growing pains, insults, reconciliations, forgiveness, joys, sadness, boredom, money woes, in-law interactions, and trials of parenthood that most marriages face. The fact that they stayed together and their love deepened through the years made the book aptly named.

Although it had been recommended by a close and trusted friend, I dreaded reading `A Happy Marriage', as I was still trying to sort out mine. My wife died two and a half years ago, after 25 years of breast cancer. That adds up to a lot of poison, slash and burn, clinical trials, and anxiety about the next test results. But from the first sentence on the first page, all my fears melted away. Reading through the novel was the most sustained emotional experience I have ever had from fiction, and by the end I realized that Rafael Yglesias had written a great novel, with not a single false word. He knows people like Tolstoy knows people. Even more astonishing, I realized that I now better understood my own marriage, because for all the differences, we shared the same underlying pattern of beginning, middle and end. I am deeply grateful for his artistry, and for his humanness.

If you're looking for a lifeline in the sea of triviality and nonsense in which we all swim, `A Happy Marriage' is it.

This is one of the best works of American fiction I have read in a long time. For the record I read all the time widely and carefully. And, this is the first review I have ever written on Amazon.

First, and most compelling in "A Happy Marriage: A Novel" are the stories - two, interrelated, one about courtship and marriage, and the other about family, terminal illness and marriage. One could argue there are even more, because the tapestry of the characters' lives, and the skill of the story teller.

Second, great artists are masters of their craft. Third, the greatest artists are fearless. They will write what we dare not, yet things we do know, even if we don't want to admit them to ourselves. Yglesias is both a master and fearless, and then some. In his hands, love; illness; betrayal; privacy; human misery, mystery and joy; death and its dance; the web between mothers, fathers, husbands, wives, children, aunts, uncles; temptations that are perceived to be liberating - are all treated with brutal honesty. With this kind of truth, the novel is story that mirrors all of us.

I have told ALL my family, friends and colleagues to read this book.

The most beautiful aspect of Rafael Yglesias's A Happy Marriage is that Yglesias doesn't pull the punch.

Yglesias's Enrique Sabas and the woman he marries, Margaret, do not have the perfect marriage. I was not expecting that. What they have is a real marriage full of mundane weight and recognizable flaws and flights of stupidity.

Yet those aspects of the marriage is what makes the story work because Enrique and Margaret make it work.

That's the selling point of this novel. The surprise is that this is a happy marriage, full of good and bad and the struggle and wonder in between. It isn't maudlin for the most part. It just is what it is.

If I had one criticism is that Yglesias jumped around a little too much in the timeline and I felt that broke momentum. Because I was so interested in the outcome, I was patient and able to regain momentum in my reading but that might be a distraction for other readers. However, I would recommend that readers keep plugging along because it is worth it.

I give it 4-stars. If readers enjoy a real depiction of marriage, good and bad, then this is worth a read.

What is a happy marriage? As someone who has been married 31 years I was curious what this author had to say in his novel/memoir, A Happy Marriage. I was moved to both tears and laughter as I read Raphael Yglesias courageous and honest account of his 30 years with his wife Margaret. He captured with such deftness and humor the trance we seem to enter when we find "the one." But then we follow him through the trenches of marriage -- keeping up with the mortgage, the kids, the separateness that the daily living of life can drive between two people once so in love. I was glad he didn't give up, because then as a reader I became witness to the transformation that is possible in marriage when one chooses to stay even though everything in him wants to run. Perhaps that is real love after all as Raphel and Margaret discovered later on. It is all so poignant because of his willingnes to share his marriage story from the vantage point of Margarets death bed, looking back. He is unflinching and unsparing in sharing the reality of a very difficult death. I had to read the book slowly, taking breaks. But the reader is rewarded with the miracle of love even in death. I read this book for the sheer joy of witnessing this personal journey told with such amazing emotional presence, but I came away with much more than enjoyment. Even as the characters were transformed I felt a shift occur in me, a revitalization not only about marriage, but about life with all of its commensurate joy and sorrow, two halves of the same whole, part and parcel of each soul. I loved this book. I would recommend it to anyone who has had the courage to marry, who is considering marriage or whether to stay married, or just to someone who apprceiates a writer who is willing to become so utterly vulnerable by his truth telling that the reader almost feels they have lived the story as well.

The author of this autobiographical novel is singularly unafraid to bare the all too human flaws of his protagonist: his endless insecurities, his total self involvement, the necessary, unrelenting selfishness that comes along with being a successful artist, his infinite, unattractive neediness. And yet, he is just as infinitely lovable, despite his flaws, because of his ability to love. He is there to take care of his wife of over 30 years when she becomes terminally ill. He is determined to give her everything she needs and wants before she dies, which means, among many other things, setting aside his own grief and constantly performing delicate negotiations, never his strong suit, with doctors, friends, and family members. This is such a deeply intimate book. I admired how realistic a portrayal of a relationship he allows it to be. The rapture that we experience alongside two complicated, beautiful young people as they fall in love with each other is tempered with the acknowledgment that even the people who are our perfect life partners are not perfect. And the utter heartbreak we experience as the main character navigates the end of their life together, trying to stay sane while coping with the intrusive ugliness of modern medicine and the intrusive grief of their family and friends, is optimistic.

This is one of the most beautiful, realistic stories I have read in a very long time. It touched me very deeply and made me feel hopeful. I highly recommend it.

The story "A Happy Marriage" begins in the 1970's when Enrique Sabas meets Margaret Cohen, who becomes his future wife. The two come from different backgrounds, but despite that, there is an immediate attraction.

Told in alternating chapters, it is a poignant story. It covers their dating tears, their marriage and other import events in their lives, which includes touching and compassionate detail about Margaret's battle with cancer, her ultimate demise and her husband's devotion to her throughout.

It was not a perfect marriage, there were disappointments and financial challenges along the way, but it was portrayed as a "happy Marriage" which seemed to grow deeper when the reality set in for Enrique that her would indeed be losing his wife to this dreaded disease.

Throughout the novel there was this amazing use of foreshadowing which I found very effective. The characters were real, and developed in a way that will stay with me for a long time to come. I found it particularly touching when Enrique was making final arrangements for Margaret's death, and although there were many passages I had to stop and reread a second time, this one left me teary eyed, (as it reminded me of something my mother did when I cared for her as she was dying).......

"She wants to go in oblivious peace, he thought, looking down at the profile that appeared on the sheet's edge. That morning an alert Margaret had announced that she completed her last chore, choosing her burial clothes. He understood now that when she has asked to go to her grave wearing the earrings he bought her for her birthday, she meant that to be her goodbye to him, her last words of approval and gratitude. She had spoken and he did not answer."

A deep, passionate love story of a marriage through sickness and in health. Although this one is a work of fiction, the story was inspired by the author's relationship with his wife Margaret who passed away in 2004. The author was a high school drop out who published his first novel in 1972 at the age of 17. He is the author of nine books. RECOMMENDED

RATING - 4.5/5 stars