'We think we know the ones we love...One morning we awaken. Beside us, that familiar sleeping body in the bed: a new kind of stranger. For me it came in 1953.'
So Pearlie's story began and I was moved and challenged in equal measure by The Story of a Marriage by Andrew Sean Greer published by Faber. But If there was a single book this year which had a rather strange and inexplicable effect around the blogosphere this was possibly it.
It was a split decision.
I read it and tuned into it instantly, set as it was in post-World War Two America in the same year that I was born in
Britain ( 1953 Coronation year baby) but into a world burdened with those same anxieties, fears and
insecurities. I loved it unreservedly and regaled you all with my customary enthusiasm for a book which has absolutely touched me in some way, often difficult to pin down and sometimes difficult to know why, if a book works sometimes I have to settle for 'that's enough'.
'Maybe it's all down to the significant after-burn of a book that leaves so many sky trails across your thinking, but as I turned the final page I had one of those 'this will be a memorable book' moments.'
'...life for Pearlie is thrown into turmoil as she begins to deal with
something that the world and she are not yet ready to understand.
To
reveal much more would be to detract from the reading experience but
this is a book which grapples with so much and so succinctly I was
hard-pressed to put it down. Far from railing against the old slings
and arrows Pearlie deals with everything in her own way, making any
rush to judgement about just how she tackles this turmoil superfluous
and all tempered by a real understanding of time, place and constraint
cleverly evoked by Andrew Sean Greer's detail and characters.'
But plenty more disliked it intensely and there was some good-natured debate and banter about it all.
But good news, you can now decide for yourselves with not one but FOUR prize-draw copies of A Story of a Marriage for lucky winners worldwide today. Names in comments and if you win one, please come back and tell us which team you are on and don't feel obliged to be on mine, Mark Thwaite's very nice, I've met him.
Actually Scott Pack's very nice too though not sure if he read this one but I've met him as well and many thanks to Scott for the nod on this bit of news.
Don't miss this er...newbie blogger on the block (also an ex editor-in-chief at Faber) who will be doing an interview over at Me and My Big Mouth soon, and who I am quite sure will never be in a dither or a tangle about why he has or has not liked a book.
In an age when the man himself declares that 'blogs are rampant', though we've all seen some favourites disappear this year, this is one new and welcome addition that I for one am looking forward to reading in 2009.
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