The Good Husband (Ballantine Reader's Circle)
Two oddly mismatched married couples are the focus of Godwin's (Father Melancholy's Daughter, LJ 2/1/91) powerful new novel. Magda Danvers, once a brilliant literary theorist, now a dying professor at a small private college, is married to "good husband" and former seminarian Francis Lake. "Frannie" devotedly attends to his beloved, impatient older wife while she is dying. Watching this with wonder is Alice, young wife of famous novelist Hugo, who is also teaching at the college. After a botched home birth, Alice and Hugo's baby has died, and their grief has sent the marriage into a frosty decline. Godwin's intensely drawn characters are vividly portrayed during the most intimate times of love, marriage, and death. The result is a winner.--Ann H. Fisher, Radford P.L., Va.Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.--This text refers to theHardcoveredition.