Many Things Have Happened Since He Died [Paperback]

Elizabeth Dewberry Vaughn (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

If Holly Golightly had stayed in the South, she might have composed this fictional memoir by a young battered wife who believes she can sell her story for enough money to reverse the downward spiral of her life. The unnamed heroine has dropped out of college after the death of her father and married Malone, a violent, druggie dental student. The plot percolates rather than develops; the heroine, for example, explains that she would murder someone by driving a nail into his ear; "I would never use a gun or knife. I am against violence." Decisions about what to wear are as important as whether she will kill herself. Should she lure her husband back to a perfect Christian marriage or change all the locks? Nevertheless, most of this appealing character's effort to record her life in order to retrieve its lost potential is readable and sadly convincing.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Library Journal

This striking first novel presents a stream-of-consciousness transcription of the thoughts of a mind perilously close to the edge. The narrator, a young woman raised in a devoutly Christian household, must contend with her father's unexpected death, estrangement from her mother, a rocky marriage to an abusive dental student, and after his death by drug overdose, an unwanted pregnancy. She survives these tribulations by making a tape-recorded diary, which she then types up on her office computer. Although she hopes to sell her life story for a fortune and become a celebrity, her naivete is tempered by a surprising shrewdness and a driven need for self-expression. Vaughn's prose masterfully captures the claustrophobic feeling of psychic distress. She is a writer worth watching, and her book is recommended for all fiction collections.
- Christine Stenstrom, New York Law Sch. Lib.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Product Details

• Paperback: 267 pages
• Publisher: Vintage; First Edition edition (January 8, 1992)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0679735682
• ISBN-13: 978-0679735687
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 5.2 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #414,917 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

HIS LOVELY WIFE is my fourth novel, the second one written since I married Robert Olen Butler in 1995. He's much more well-known than I am, and often, especially in the early years of our marriage, we were introduced as, "Pulitzer-prize-winning author, Robert Olen Butler," now a slight pause, and the volume goes down a notch, then, "and his lovely wife, Elizabeth Dewberry." In the beginning I sort of liked it--my first husband was unemployed for the last five years of our marriage, and I was never introduced as his lovely wife--but after a while, I started feeling irritated by it. I hated that I found myself wanting to tell complete strangers whom I'd just met that I, too, was an author, but I felt like I was disappearing. HIS LOVELY WIFE is not autobiographical--I know, all writers say that, and half of them are lying, though in this case, it's true!--but it was easy to find the empathic connection with my narrator, who feels that at least in other people's minds and to a certain extent in her own mind, as well, she feels defined by who she's married to more than by who she is. I'm lucky, though, to have been able to use this experience to take my next step as a writer, which, ironically, means that it helped me figure out something about who I am.

I'm not sure why anybody would want to know this, but it's standard biographical information, and I'm not trying to be difficult, so: I was born in Birmingham, Alabama, received a BS in English from Vanderbilt, and a PhD in twentieth-century American fiction, with a dissertation on Hemingway, from Emory. I've published four novels (or did I mention that already?), and my work has appeared in ZOETROPE: ALL-STORY, SOUTHERN LIVING, THE CAMBRIDGE COMPANION TO HEMINGWAY, and MY NEW ORLEANS, among other places. I live outside Tallahassee, Florida.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Amazing use of language and voice, December 31, 2001

By 

Sarah Kowalski (Philadelphia, PA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Many Things Have Happened Since He Died (Paperback)

This is the kind of novel that makes one forget to breathe, it's so compelling. From the first sentence to the last, every word of Dewberry's novel feels vital and necessary; at times I felt I was reading an extended poem. Told in the haunting first-person voice of a young wife, Many Things Have Happened Since He Died recounts her struggles with an abusive husband and an emotionally tangled family. Often beautiful, often disturbing, often sad, this book kept me riveted. By far the best novel I've read this year.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Stream of Consciousness Never Tasted So Good, November 18, 2006

By 

Diane B. Wilkes "Diane Wilkes, Voracious Reader" (Oreland, PA USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Many Things Have Happened Since He Died (Paperback)

This beautiful and captivating novel is written in the very unique voice of a young woman whose view of Christianity is both compelling and horrifying. She strives to be submissive for Christ's sake, but her intense, violent husband makes that quite a challenge. There is something pitifully real and moving about her--and the humor is not like any I've read before. The narrative voice is very stream-of-consciousness, but accessible once you pick up the rhythm, something I found quite easy to do.

A unique protagonist, a unique novel.

3.0 out of 5 stars Great voice, not-so-great plot, August 26, 2007

By 

Just_Karen (Portland, Oregon) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Many Things Have Happened Since He Died (Paperback)

I should have liked this book more than I did, because the narrating character's voice is so perfectly done... rushed and fussy and grating, inadvertantly blurting out the truth about herself through careful screens of Christian denial. As a character, she is annoying and brave, faithful and hypocritical, determined and lost all at once. I admire the skill it took to create her.

But in truth, I didn't really LIKE this character. The story she tells is horrifying but not compelling. She has "I didn't know any better and that's why" written all over her, and her rare moments of standing up for herself are always followed by a return to Christian values and the trap they have laid for her. It's as if she were specifically created to be the kind of character limited enough to tolerate what she tolerates, even though abuse cuts across all class and religion lines. Why is the plot so recursive? Why does she not move forward? Why does all delivery come from without, never from within?

That being said, something in there got to me. I'm ordering other Dewberry novels to see what I think. I guess I'll say, read it for the writing, not for the story.