The anti-On Chesil Beach, please

April 30, 2009 9:47 AM

What should I (a late-marrying, book-crazy, somewhat institution-of-marriage-wary bride) read on my honeymoon? Inspired (in a way) by this question, I'm looking for novels to help me reflect on, process, and understand marriage.

I've been a voracious reader since I was little, and I still understand the world best by reading stories. So now I'm in love and thrilled to be marrying my fiance, I'd like read novels that might help me think about this whole new thing. Can you help me plug the hole in my reading history with some big, enthralling novels?

(Bonus points for novels from a woman's POV. Paperback availability is appreciated.)

posted by minervous to media & arts (24 comments total)

On Chesil Beach by MacEwan. (Bonus points if it's a beach honeymoon!)
posted by grobstein at 9:51 AM on April 30

OH CRAP! hahaha I didn't see the title, and I'm a bad person. How about . . . The Gathering, by Anne Enright?
posted by grobstein at 9:57 AM on April 30

Another Roadside Attraction
posted by Roach at 9:59 AM on April 30

Cordelia's Honor (omnibus of two novels)
posted by Zed at 9:59 AM on April 30 [1 favorite]

Hm, I read PG Wodehouse on my honeymoon. (Heavy Weather, if you're curious.) Probably not what you're looking for.

Maybe...The Tenant of Wildfell Hall? I know not of this On Chesil Beach so I can't comment about whether or not it's the anti-. It is enthralling, though.
posted by Neofelis at 10:05 AM on April 30

A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian
posted by ethnomethodologist at 10:07 AM on April 30

Mr. Bridge
Mrs. Bridge
Portrait of a Marriage
posted by OmieWise at 10:14 AM on April 30

Ada, Vladamir Nabokov,
Pablo Neruda poetry
posted by Elsie at 10:36 AM on April 30

Busman's Honeymoon by Dorothy L. Sayers
posted by MichelleinMD at 11:04 AM on April 30 [2 favorites]

Calvin Trillin, About Alice
posted by Xalf at 11:15 AM on April 30 [4 favorites]

Amy Bloom is a marvelous contemporary fiction writer (Away is wonderful and has several compelling romantic relationships, but doesn't deal exclusively with marriage). Check out her short stories, namely Come to Me and A Blind Man Can See How Much I Love You. She also edited a brilliant anthology of essays called called Here Lies My Heart: Why We Marry, Why We Don't, and What We Find There.

Also check out Eros the Bittersweet (I recommend Anne Carson on Metafilter so often you'd think I was collecting royalties.)

There's a whole slew of love stories in My Mistress's Sparrow Is Dead, edited by Jeffrey Eugenides. "Some Other, Better Otto" by Deborah Eisenberg should be of particular interest to you.
posted by zoomorphic at 11:39 AM on April 30 [1 favorite]

They're not novels, but What No One Tells The Bride and The Conscious Bride and Young Wives' Tales sound like exactly what you are looking for, but in a nonfictional context. Plenty of real-life examples in them too (indeed, that's the entirety of YWT).
posted by jenfullmoon at 11:54 AM on April 30

How about Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage: Stories by Alice Munro?

(But better yet, what if you decided not to do any reading on your honeymoon? As wary as you may be, consider giving in and being present to yourself and your husband. Experience those first days of marriage for yourself, rather than through another person's lens (however brilliant and interesting), without irony or over-analyzation. Just a suggestion.)
posted by kitcat at 11:55 AM on April 30 [3 favorites]

The Glimpses of the Moon, by Edith Wharton
posted by nicwolff at 11:57 AM on April 30 [1 favorite]

This is not a novel, but Madeleine L'engle wrote a wonderful memoir of her marriage called Two-Part Invention. Just great.
posted by Sublimity at 12:00 PM on April 30

Charles Baxter, A Feast of Love
posted by sulaine at 12:42 PM on April 30

A S Byatt's Possession
posted by brujita at 12:49 PM on April 30

Middlemarch? Several models of marriage there. Though as kitcat suggests you may find deep reading too possessing of you at a time when you want your emotional energy to be focussed on you and your partner, rather than on fiction.
posted by paduasoy at 1:01 PM on April 30

Love in the Time of Cholera, by Gabriel Garcia Marquez.
posted by sickinthehead at 1:03 PM on April 30

I imagine that if you're a book-crazy kind of person there's a good chance you'll have read this, and I concede that it is not about marriage so much as courtship...

But. Persuasion is my favourite of Jane Austen's novels, and it deals with a couple who find each other (again) late. Well, late for the normal going rate in 1817 anyway - Anne Elliot is 27. It's a book about second chances, and about how we can lose our bloom early but find our way late. I read it first in the first six months of my marriage after I married at 31, and just thinking about it is making me a bit teary.
posted by calico at 2:10 PM on April 30 [2 favorites]

I love Crossing to Safety, by Wallace Stegner. It's more of a meditation on two marriages, but quietly radiant and followed through to the end.
posted by BundleOfHers at 2:10 PM on April 30

Thank you, everyone.

Calico, the phrase "we can lose our bloom early but find our way late" made me all teary. Beautifully put.

I'm looking forward to all of these suggestions, especially the Trillan (of course!), the Stegner, TheGlimpses of the Moon and the Munro stories.
posted by minervous at 6:28 AM on May 1

You might check out Happy All the Time by Laurie Colwin. I just read it and, while it wasn't quite my thing, it explores two pretty great marriages.

I've also been massively enjoying Rosamund Pilcher - I just read Winter Solstice and quite enjoyed it. The main character is a splendid older woman.
posted by kristi at 1:53 PM on May 1

As one of Alice Munro's great themes is marriage breakdown and adultery, you might want to hold off on that a little...
posted by jokeefe at 4:56 PM on May 1