Marry Me: A Romance [Paperback]

John Updike (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 27, 1996

"It is, quite simply, Updike's best novel yet." NEWSWEEK

A deftly satirical portrait of life and love in a suburban town as only Updike can paint it.


From the Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Updike's eighth novel, subtitled "A Romance" because, he says, "People don't act like that any more," centers on the love affair of a married couple in the Connecticut of 1962. Unfortunately, this is a couple whose members are married to other people. Suburban infidelity is familiar territory by now, but nobody knows it as well as Updike, and the book is written with the author's characteristic poetic sensibility and sly wit.

Review

"Marry Me is superb, sharp, witty, perceptive, honest.... With keen intelligence, Updike has cut a slice of life the width of one town, the height of one feverish summer, the depth of four people trying to understand why their center does not hold -- and turned it into a mirror of our modern popular wisdom."

-- Chicago Daily News

"Updike's most mature work. His writing has deepened, grown wiser and funnier, like a face that is aging well."

-- The Atlantic

"Exuberantly lighthearted, genuinely comic."

-- Publishers Weekly

"A dazzling performance, cleverly and beautifully written."

-- Library Journal

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks (August 27, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0449912159
• ISBN-13: 978-0449912157
• Product Dimensions: 5.5 x 0.8 x 8.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #122,278 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

John Updike was born in 1932, in Shillington, Pennsylvania. He graduated from Harvard College in 1954, and spent a year in Oxford, England, at the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art. From 1955 to 1957 he was a member of the staff of The New Yorker, and since 1957 lived in Massachusetts. He was the father of four children and the author of more than fifty books, including collections of short stories, poems, essays, and criticism. His novels won the Pulitzer Prize (twice), the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Rosenthal Award, and the Howells Medal. A previous collection of essays, Hugging the Shore, received the 1983 National Book Critics Circle Award for criticism. John Updike died on January 27, 2009, at the age of 76.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

23 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Beautiful dialogue, July 29, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: Marry Me: A Romance (Paperback)

This is my second Updike novel and I loved it. The story is typically Updike, with adulterous themes and enchanting prose. It's a story about a man struggling to decide which of two women in his life will make him happiest. One of the women is his wife, the other is his married neighbor. The characters are strong people who at times seem deeply moved by their circumstances, and at other times surprisingly passe. Updike is great at making the reader feel what the characters feel. I was angry, guilty, hurt and amused throughout this novel. I recommend this book highly

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Sally and Jerry, Jerry and Ruth, Ruth and Richard, Richard and Sally, February 9, 2008

By 

Ethan Cooper (Big Apple) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Marry Me: A Romance (Paperback)

In the Updike oeuvre, MARRY ME is not unlike Couples and even Villages, as it explores infidelity and the search for happiness in Northeastern commuter towns. Like COUPLES, MARRY Me features thirty-somethings with young children who gather for weekend drinks and weirdly ecstatic volleyball. Like VILLAGES, it has a selfish and unfaithful male protagonist and even a wife in car accident. These books, like the RABBIT novels, share a lot--in this case, a sensibility, a suburban setting, and an underlying social vocabulary. They are somewhat different looks at the same jewel.

In MARRY ME, there are many fine sections. For example, in the second chapter, "The Wait", Updike perfectly captures the frantic helplessness of trying to get on successive planes as a standby. Likewise, in the third chapter, "The Reacting of Ruth", there is an absolutely pitch-perfect picture of a family in crisis.

But within these two chapters, there is also what I experienced as two mediocre plays. In "The Wait", this is the snippet conversations between the lovers Jerry and Sally. These alternate between confusion (deliberate by Updike) and empty rhetoric about love and fate (also deliberate). Likewise, in "The Reacting of Ruth" there is brilliant dispute between Jerry and Ruth, his wife, with Jerry often making exactly the perfect point to further or justify his position. But for me, these conversations were unreal in their hair-splitting precision.

I'm not a professor. But it's my impression that in the mid-seventies, when MARRY ME was published, Updike, Roth, and other literary authors employed such dialogue. Here, these authors would create realistic social settings with believable dynamics between the characters. This was real. But then, their characters were mouthpieces, not for ideological purposes but so that the author could identify the subtleties in their actions and beliefs. Even now, some of Philip Roth reads this way, with Roth, basically, holding your face to his conclusions. What I'm saying is that this is a literary style that, in retrospect, doesn't look too successful.

Similarly, the fourth chapter of this book, "The Reacting of Richard", also has the elements of a bad play, but for different reasons. In this case, Updike unwinds an affair, showing its angry consequences. Here, his story and interaction seem absolutely true. But this chapter is also only about this unwinding, with Richard, the cuckold, ranting, and others adjusting to his fury. In this case, the chapter has all the qualities of real life--that is, a situation dominated by a loud bore. After a while, it gets tiresome.

Nonetheless, MARRY ME is an engaging book. This is because narrative is an art and Updike is definitely a master at involving his readers and getting them to turn pages. Actually, this is an attribute of Updike's work that I depend on. You see, whenever my reading is stalled, I pull a Flashman novel or something by Updike off the shelf. Somehow, Fraser and Updike renew my pleasure in reading and I'm ready for more.

Admittedly, MARRY ME is not Updike at his best. But it's as good, if not better, than most of the highly hyped new novels that publishers say show the promise of greatness. With Updike, even in his lesser work, greatness is always apparent. For example:

"Beyond the green railing of the promenade a beach curved into a distance where what appeared to be a fort of a fragile pink overhung the glistening steel of the sea; the beach was entirely of pebbles, loose washed pebbles in whose minuscule caves and crevices the ocean musically sighed as through the gills of an organ."

Or...

"The clouds materialized earlier than usual; little upright puffs at first, like puffs of smoke from a locomotive starting its run around the horizon, then clouds increasingly structural and opaque, castles, continents that, overhead, grew as they moved, keeping the sun behind them..."

Updike has faults. But, how can you not like the guy?

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Marital dilemma (4.2 *s), January 20, 2008

By 

J. Grattan "Ideas can move the world" (Lawrenceville, GA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Marry Me: A Romance (Paperback)

This book is remindful of the author's earlier "Couples," which too involved adulterous relations among suburban couples. However, the focus of this book is far more narrow involving only two families and is much more dialog intensive giving a clearer window into the full range of emotions experienced by these people.

Jerry and Ruth Conant and Richard and Sally Mathias are thirty-something's with three children in each family. The focus of the book is the affair of Jerry and Sally. At times they seem certain of their love and eventual marriage. Yet others are involved for whom genuine affections exist and doubts continually arise, not only as to practicalities but also as to understanding their true and long-term feelings. Some of the scenes are lengthy and it is fair to say can be tedious. The dialog seems endless and repetitious, constantly reviewing the same points and feelings - and it all seems very realistic. The dialog really draws the reader into their dilemma.

The book is really quite insightful concerning marriage in so far as it goes, but it is inconclusive. What to do when a seemingly better marital fit arises after many years is a subject far larger than one novel can solve.