Uncommon Arrangements: Seven Marriages | 
|  | | | Title: | Uncommon Arrangements: Seven Marriages | | Author: | Katie Roiphe | | Publisher: | The Dial Press | | Type: | Book / Paperback | | Publication Date: | 20 May, 2008 | | ISBN / ISBN-13: | 0385339380 / 9780385339384 | | List Price: | $14.00 | | You Save: | $2.80 | | Amazon Price: | $11.20 | |
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Product Description
Katie Roiphe’s stimulating work has made her one of the most talked about cultural critics of her generation. Now this bracing young writer delves deeply into one of the most layered of subjects: marriage. Drawn in part from the private memoirs, personal correspondence, and long-forgotten journals of the British literary community from 1910 to the Second World War, here are seven “marriages à la mode”—each rising to the challenge of intimate relations in more or less creative ways. Jane Wells, the wife of H.G., remained his rock, despite his decade-long relationship with Rebecca West (among others). Katherine Mansfield had an irresponsible, childlike romance with her husband, John Middleton Murry, that collapsed under the strain of real-life problems. Vera Brittain and George Gordon Catlin spent years in a “semidetached” marriage (he in America, she in England). Vanessa Bell maintained a complicated harmony with the painter Duncan Grant, whom she loved, and her husband, Clive. And her sister Virginia Woolf, herself no stranger to marital particularities, sustained a brilliant running commentary on the most intimate details of those around her.
Every chapter revolves around a crisis that occurred in each of these marriages—as serious as life-threatening illness or as seemingly innocuous as a slightly tipsy dinner table conversation—and how it was resolved…or not resolved. In these portraits, Roiphe brilliantly evokes what are, as she says, “the fluctuations and shifts in attraction, the mysteries of lasting affection, the endurance and changes in love, and the role of friendship in marriage.” The deeper mysteries at stake in all relationships.
From the Hardcover edition.
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Customer Reviews:
• Engrossing 06 August, 2008
I am not sure how I became aware of this book in the first place or why I ended up buying it, but I am so glad I did. I hated for it to end and I savored every page.
It's so well written that you almost feel like you know these subjects better than their spouses did - and maybe you do.
In short, it's an insightful and well-researched look into the private worlds, thoughts, and marriages of some very interesting people - and also proof that the more things change, the more they stay the same.
- Reviewed by customer ID: A1PGHYEAQO49XS
• Uncommon Lives 26 June, 2008
This book is written in short chapters that describe the atypical marriage relationships of wealthy, well-known writers and their friends in post-Victorian England. There is a great deal of overlap in the stories about the various couples, so one person's spouse will show up as the friend, lover, or confidant in another story about a different marriage. It's all rather incestuous, and the resultant homogeneity of the milieu studied by the author paradoxically makes more mundane the seeming differences she wishes to stress.
It's well to keep in mind that the time and place under study was one characterized by very rigid social roles, especially for women; still, one wonders whether a study across cultures might not have proven more meaningful. As it is, the book seems almost the story of an extended family, rather than a review of disparate marriage arrangements.
- Reviewed by customer ID: A8D5WKQGRR2XN
• Uncommonly Intriguing 21 July, 2008
"Some of the hand-wringing about marriage in the twenties remains eerily relevant to today's marriages." So says Katie Roiphe, the author of this most intriguing literary biography. She explores the marriages of seven of the most luminous writers and artists of the twenties -- including H.G. Wells, Katherine Mansfield and Elizabeth Von Arnim (who penned "Enchanted April".) Each vignette is centered around a moment of crisis that creates a need for a creative and unorthodox solution.
Katherine Manfield develops a "child-love" with her husband, who is not able to rise to challenge of helping her through the tuberculosis that kills her at age 34. H.G. Wells "creates" his wife Jane -- even giving her a new name -- and then indulges in no-responsibility affairs with Rebecca West, among others. Ottoline Morrell gives herself over totally to nurturing rising artistes, only to be stabbed in the back by those she most befriended. And then there's Radclyffe Hall -- otherwise known as John -- who is surprisingly Victorian, despite her long-time relationship with her "wife" Una Trobridge and her lover, Evguenia Souline.
As the author says: "One cannot fall into 'meagre repetitions', one cannot live automatically, one cannot simply live the way everyone else is living: one has to have the constant energy, the constant imagination, the constant refueling affection, because one is making up a life as one goes along."
This book is highly recommended for everyone who is navigating a marriage and who is curious about how others handled their own, and how they confronted domesticity and long-term emotional involvement. It's particularly recommended for anyone with a literary bend; it's downright fascinating to see how those famous literary individuals from 1910 to World War II lived their lives. And, as an extra plus, it's compulsively readable and "dishy."
- Reviewed by customer ID: A3MFGULNTMAJS9
• Fabulous 03 October, 2008
This is a beautifully written book, refreshingly and surprisingly free of cliches.Roiphe has an uncanny sensitivity for the intimate lives of others.
- Reviewed by customer ID: AYQYO6QKS18Y2
• Fascinating Portraits 04 June, 2008
This book is a fascinating glimpse behind the curtain of seven relationships. Not just what happened but what motivated. If you're a feminist you'll need to put that aside and read as an objective bystander. It's hard to do!
The author does a brilliant job of making the people and their stories come to life. I felt like I got to know these fascinating characters. I found it very difficult to put the book down. I appreciate that the author doesn't judge her characters - this relationship or action was 'good' and this was 'bad - but tries to understand and relate to the reader why the characters did what they did.
We are often led to believe that previous eras were more honest, true, chaste. This book shows that that just isn't true. Each generation has to find its own way in the world.
- Reviewed by customer ID: A2SFH65NTUTN4F
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