Memories of a Marriage: A Novel
Begley sets aside his ongoing saga about attorney Schmidt, last seen in Schmidt Steps Back (2012), to unleash a fiendishly clever, Fitzgeraldesque tale about marriage, friendship, gossip, and self-justification. Urbane and methodical writer Philip has barely recovered from the deaths of his beloved daughter and wife. Finally reconciled to solitude in Manhattan, he is intrigued and dismayed to be accosted by Lucy De Bourgh at the ballet and is subsequently “shocked and fascinated” by what time and anger have done to her. Born into a blue-blood Rhode Island clan, exuberantly sexy and entitled Lucy rebelliously married a man she hoped everyone would think was beneath her. Now alone, vitriolic, and alcoholic, she insists on telling Philip the story of her disastrous marriage in aggressively explicit detail. Others in their privileged circle step up to share their versions of the sordid entanglement, fully aware that they are providing Philip with explosive material. Begley, marvelously droll and possessed of a rapier wit, revels in his mercurial characters, intricate psychological puzzles, unreliable memories, counterintuitive class divisions, and all the mysteries and miseries of lust and love. --Donna Seaman