The Wedding of the Two-Headed Woman: A Novel [Hardcover]

Alice Mattison (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 10, 2004

Alice Mattison's last novel, New York Times Notable Book The Book Borrower, was called "extraordinary" (Washington Post Book World) and "ambitious and original" (Wall Street Journal), and was lauded for capturing in "deceptively quiet prose ... the fraught, complex relations of men and women" (New York Times Book Review). Now Mattison revisits Daisy Andalusia, a character from her critically acclaimed collection of stories, Men Giving Money, Women Yelling, in a simmering, intelligent novel of love, marriage, and friendship set in a New England city that's sometimes charming, sometimes dangerous.

Following an early first marriage, Daisy Andalusia remained single and enjoyed the company of men on her own terms, making the most of her independent life -- especially her sexual freedom. But now, in her fifties, she is no longer unattached; after a long on-again off-again love affair, she has married inner-city landlord Pekko Roberts. A resident of New Haven, Connecticut, Daisy earns her living organizing clutter, a calling that affords her an intimate peek at the disorder of the lives of others. Her business soon leads her to a Yale project studying small cities, where she partners with the ebullient director, Gordon Skeetling.

Over her husband's fierce objections -- and working with Gordon, with whom life becomes ever more complicated -- Daisy organizes a conference about murder in small cities, including New Haven. And for a community theater group seeking a subject for a play, Daisy appropriates a tabloid headline that Gordon has kept for years among the dusty piles in his office: two-headed woman weds two men: doc says she's twins. These words will take on increasing significance over eight transformative months, March through October, 2001, as Daisy questions whether she can truly be a part of anything -- a two-headed woman, a friendship, a marriage -- while discovering more about herself than she wants to know.

Profoundly moving and psychologically penetrating, The Wedding of the Two-Headed Woman is the intimate, endearing, and finally triumphant story of how Daisy at last learns to live the life she has so lovingly crafted for herself.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Fifty-something Daisy Andalusia sorts and organizes the clutter of her New Haven, Conn., neighbors for a living, a profession that perfectly complements her affinity for secrets. Married to a man she's not sure she loves, she becomes romantically involved with a client entirely unlike her husband. A tabloid headline she reads while at work, "Two-Headed Woman Weds Two Men," accounts for the title of the book, inspires a community theater production that establishes new and unexpected bonds among its participants and illustrates Daisy's dual role as wife and lover, or, as she puts it, a "woman who's good half the time." When her affair loses its initial momentum, Daisy must struggle to find purpose and connection through her work and weigh the appeal of a lover with no secrets versus that of a husband with many. Mattison's fascination with relationships, the perennial subject of her critically acclaimed fiction (The Book Borrower; Men Giving Money, Women Yelling; etc.), lies in their complication; indeed, Daisy may thrive on the "unresolved." No friendship is clear-cut, no dalliance entirely fulfilling. As the title would suggest, there are two faces to everyone, and Mattison captures each of them beautifully.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

Mattison's innovative allegory involves one Daisy Andalusia--or is it two Daisy Andalusias? As the title suggests, Mattison's heroine is deeply conflicted. Married yet promiscuous, organized yet haphazard, Daisy is adept at juggling the various fragments of her life until she begins working for, and sleeping with, Gordon. While organizing his office clutter, Daisy discovers a newspaper article about a mysterious two-headed woman and offers this headline as fodder for her community theater group's improvisational play. As that parallel drama unfolds in a contentious manner, Daisy's affair with Gordon escalates until it threatens to undermine and expose her not-so-controlled lifestyle. Exploring her emotions through a disjointed, expository journal that she may or may not let others read, Daisy analyzes her past and present love affairs, defending and refuting her choices and motives, until she comes to a tenuous acceptance of her true self. With unconventional insight, Mattison captures Daisy's emotional angst in a disarming portrait of a woman at odds with herself. Carol Haggas
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: William Morrow (August 10, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0066213789
• ISBN-13: 978-0066213781
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.4 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,460,451 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Alice Mattison grew up in Brooklyn, New York and now lives in New Haven, Connecticut. Her new novel, WHEN WE ARGUED ALL NIGHT, will be published in 2012 by Harper Perennial, and her earlier books include NOTHING IS QUITE FORGOTTEN IN BROOKLYN, IN CASE WE'RE SEPARATED: CONNECTED STORIES, and THE BOOK BORROWER. Twelve of her short stories have appeared in The New Yorker, and her stories, essays, and poems have been published in The New York Times, The Yale Review, The Pushcart Prize, Ploughshares, and elsewhere. She teaches fiction in the MFA program at Bennington College.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Engrossing and Insightful, January 18, 2005

By 

Eager Reader (Washington, D.C.) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Wedding of the Two-Headed Woman: A Novel (Hardcover)

I really might have given this book a four-star rating, because I would be inclined to save the five-star ratings for Faulkner-level fiction, but I wanted to offset the tepid reviews of other readers. I liked this book a lot.

I picked the book off the shelf for its bizarre title, and I was very glad that I did. This book works wonderfully on a number of levels---I will be thinking about it for quite some time. It's not your typical easy-read mystery novel, but it is nonetheless extremely engaging. It's deep enough to satisfy my English major origins, and accessible enough to hold me to the end, despite my overloaded lifestyle and constant interruptions from my children. This is an extremely insightful book that rings very true, both emotionally and philosophically.

The themes---or, rather, what I perceived as the themes---are complex and thought-provoking. The author doesn't dole out easy answers to moral and philosophical questions---life doesn't work that way, and neither should literature. What are some of the themes, as I perceive them? Oh, well........Personal moral responsibility, loyalty, the interconnectedness of human beings, moral relativity, emotional intimacy, how one judges the "goodness" of another human being, the emotional fall-out from keeping (or not keeping secrets), intellectual snobbery, the purpose of art..... I may be completely off base, but these are the issues that this book raised in my mind. Oh, and I disagree with the person who found the book bizarre. The characters, and even the plot, rang very true for me.

Whether you like or dislike this book, I predict that it will be very memorable for you.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars One of the best writers I had never heard of before, March 18, 2006

By 

Samantha G. Zeitlin (la jolla, CA United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Wedding of the Two-Headed Woman: A Novel (Hardcover)

Unlike most of the other people who wrote reviews here, I was racing home from work each day to devour more of this book. I love Mattison's writing, and the voice of her complicated main character in this novel is easy to hear and endlessly interesting to listen to. Although I'm not sure I would like Daisy in real life, I couldn't put this book down because I loved having access to the internal struggles and seeing how they often contrasted with her actual actions.

Although I sometimes found Daisy's choices illogical or hard to understand, I think that is the point of this sort of book: it's a specific character study, as much as it is a collection of observations about human nature in general. The slightly fragmented style of the story didn't bother me at all, because I had no trouble keeping up, and in general I like nonlinear stories. (note: LA Confidential, the movie, was way too fragmented for me).

Daisy is a fragmented, complicated person, and she is the one telling the story, so it makes sense that the stories are a little bit fragmented and interwoven. That's how real women are! I think Mattison has real insights that more readers should enjoy.

4.0 out of 5 stars Love all of her books, June 12, 2010

By 

Susan J. Houser "gandycat" (Pittsburgh, PA United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Wedding of the Two-Headed Woman: A Novel (Paperback)

I've read several of her books and have loved all of them. This novel isn't perfect, there were times where it was hard to like or identify with Daisy. But what Mattison always does best for me is create complex women. You might not like Daisy but you keep coming back to find out what she'll do next, and hope that she evolves. I also appreciate that she portrays female friendships realisticly and without stereotypes.