Amazon.com Review
One doesn't know whether to admire Vicki and Dennis Covington for writing
Cleaving or to shudder and hide one's head in the sand. Written in alternating voices, this tag-team memoir draws a thorough portrait of one marriage, complete with decades' worth of adultery, drugs, alcoholism, abortion, and sin. In the Covingtons' case, these bohemian carryings-on come mixed with a goodly portion of old-time religion. After going sober, the couple settled down to raising daughters, attending church, doing good works, and writing books (they claim 7 between them, including Dennis's thoughtful
Salvation on Sand Mountain, a finalist for the National Book Award). They even spearheaded a church mission to drill wells in Central America, a project which here yields not only life-giving water but also a rich flood of marital metaphor.
Yet their problems didn't go away. Charged with writing an inspirational book about marriage, the Covingtons found their own union once again in serious disarray. Rather than making themselves look good, they chose to tell the absolute truth about what had passed between them, and in the process they created this unusual memoir, an unflinching look at the forces that bind a couple together as well as those that rend them apart. After all, as Vicki points out, the word cleave--taken from the Biblical injunction for a man to leave his mother and father--can mean either to cling to or to divide, "as by a cutting blow." In their case, it meant both: "Love plays us like an accordion. Together, apart, together, apart..." People talk about honesty as if that were a literary virtue in itself. It's not, of course, but this excruciatingly honest memoir has many virtues of its own, including some lovely, unfussy writing and a steadfast refusal to look away when that would be the easiest thing to do. Whether all this spiritual soul-baring makes you feel compassionate or just queasy is, however, a matter of taste. --Mary Park
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Publishers Weekly
Collaborating for the first time, journalist Dennis Covington (Salvation on Sand Mountain) and his novelist wife, Vicki Covington (The Last Hotel for Women), attempt to address the dangers and joys of matrimonial life. In a "he said, she said" format, they write of having been childhood acquaintances before marrying in their rocky, alcoholic 20s; of trying to shield their children from their marital indiscretions; and of becoming spiritually impassioned volunteer diggers of wells in Central America. Both spouses write with simple grace, providing evocative details that sum up their experiences. But while some passages are remarkably insightful about the institution of marriage, much of the book is dedicated to their individual hand-wringing over the consequences of their affairs in what they had agreed would be an open relationship. In a particularly forced analogy, Vicki writes that "marriage is like a rain forestAit is in the understory that we struggle, fight and conceive." In the Covington marriage, it seems, it's always monsoon season. The couple triumphs over alcoholism and infertility, but the writing of each projects an edge of narcissism and selfishness, with blame easily assigned and credit only grudgingly granted. Later, when the Covingtons yearn for spiritual enlightenment, they take up well digging, finding water on their own property and in poverty-stricken El Salvador. Both of them imbue the simple action of boring into the earth with enormous significance as they try to find not just God, but also justification for hurting their other lovers. Although the book draws some power from its confessional style, it founders as a source of wisdom about marriage. Agent, Amanda Urban.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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