A novel about four married couples who lead similarly double lives, gathered together at a grand party and each person wearing a mask which hides their secret inner troubles. Follows SUCH VISITORS.
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
In the tradition of Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway and Margaret Drabble's The Radiant Way, Huth's novel invites us we are invited to a lavish party and the preparations for it in and around Oxford, England. The ball itself--a hilariously overwrought affair thrown by Frances and Toby Farthingoe--serves as the grand finale to a series of variations on the theme of marriage. By the time the music dies away, we know a handful of the participants, their dreams and their frustrations. Thomas Arkwright, one of the more tormented characters, speaks for all of them when he says that "sometimes a man finds himself at a crossroads"; even Ursula and Mary, two of the happier women, struggle for balance and endure anxiety. With considerable skill (aside from a few awkward flashbacks), Huth ( Nowhere Girl ; Virginia Fly Is Drowning ) has choreographed an elaborate dance of sorts for nearly a dozen characters--young and old, loyal and adulterous. She conveys physical gestures ("indignant shoulders hunched up, spiky fingers riffling through peanuts as if they were worry beads") as cannily as she captures the emotional complexities of intimacy and desire. She has fun while she's at it, and so will the reader.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From the Inside Flap
Duplicity is a skill that is required in even the happiest of marriages--a state the couples in Angela Huth's slyly witty comedy of manners and morals are still hoping to attain. Their skills in pretense and the rich variety of their affairs, imagined and real, weave an elaborate web that will leave the reader amazed, amused, and enthralled.
After years of marriage to bad-tempered overweight Thomas, Rachel is reduced to dreams of shopping sprees in the mid-afternoon, until she decides one evening to "signal availability" at a stuffy university dinner to disastrous results. Her oblivious husband, meanwhile, manages to break off one dull affair only to fall head over heels in love with a reclusive stranger's paintings. Then there are the Farthingoes, whose marital distance is measured as much by his fascination with the nighttime habits of badgers as by her immersion in the details of the grand ball to which all our heroes are invited and which she approaches with the fervor of Zeffirelli on the stage of La Scala.
At the Farthingoes' ball, all the invitees are brought together in weal and in woe, in joy and in sorrow, for better and for worse. With compassion and intelligence, Huth captures the foibles of her often misguided but all-too-human characters, as they converge in a delightful midnight climax to find their hopes and desires unexpectedly transformed.
"The territory mapped so cruelly, wisely, and wittily in Angela Huth's new novel, Invitation to the Married Life, is that well-worn patch: English upper-middle-class marriage, a region so dreary that no novelist should impose it on readers unless she is very, very good. Huth, thankfully, is."--Vanity Fair
"Any reader of Jane Austen will take to this exploration of the married state instantly, for it is the kind of thing Jane Austen might well have written if she had got married and amused herself and her readers with the trials and rewards she found in that state."--John Bayley, London Evening Standard
"I had better own up to a particular fondness for Angela Huth's quietly malevolent wit and for the neatness with which she strips the veils from her characters to expose their weaknesses and vices."--Miranda Seymour, The Sunday Times
"Invitation to a Married Life is cleverly put together, funny, and perceptive-a joy to read."--Rosamund Pilcher, author of The Shell Seekers
Angela Huth was educated in the visual arts at the Beaux Arts in Paris, Annigoni's Art School in Florence, and the Bryan Shaw Art School in London. She left the art world after school to write for a magazine and has continued to acquit herself successfully as a journalist, critic, and broadcaster ever since. Among her many books are five novels and two collections of short stories. She lives in Oxford, where she is married to a don. She has two daughters, Candida Crewe and Eugenie Howard Johnston. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Accept This Invitation!,
By Jayne Jaudon Ferrer "Author of four gift book... (Greenville, SC USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Invitation to the Married Life: A Novel (Hardcover)
Huth's very satisfying style of writing made this book hard to put down, once I got past the first few pages. I found myself hurrying to get through the day's chores so, like Rachel, I could escape to enjoy this private pleasure. It did take a bit of time to draw me in, but by all means, stick with it. The characters are richly drawn, the dialogue crisp and wry. All in all, a thoroughly good read.
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