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From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. In this astute and engrossing examination of seven artsy marriages from 20th-century England, Roiphe (Last Night in Paradise) couples her penchant for social criticism with her training in English literature (she holds a Ph.D. from Princeton). The book's title is apt, for some of the unions Roiphe describes may strike even today's jaded readers as outré. Feminist writer Vera Brittain proposed that she and her husband, George Catlin, be joined in their household by her dear friend, Winifred Holtby. Katherine Mansfield and John Middleton Murry found that their highly romantic conception of love failed to sustain them through illness and other crises. Roiphe also examines the unions of H.G. Wells and Jane Wells; Elizabeth von Arnim and John Francis Russell; Clive and Vanessa Bell; Ottoline and Philip Morrell; and Radclyffe Hall and Una Troubridge. Roiphe writes not just as a disinterested historian. She wants to know what she can learn from Brittain and the rest about marriage, and the themes Roiphe focuses on remain relevant to 21st-century marriages: is domesticity compatible with long-term emotional engagement, or are marriages destined to become boring? Roiphe finds that once people began to think of marriage as an arrangement that ought to produce human happiness, monogamy was no longer a given. Fans of Pamela Paul and Cathi Hanauer will enjoy this volume, which is vintage Roiphe: provocative, dishy, substantive and fun. (July)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
From Booklist
*Starred Review* Marriage is perpetually interesting," observes Roiphe. The author of two previous astute books about contemporary sexual mores here extends her fascination with complex human interactions in a set of incisive literary double portraits. Roiphe's colorful subjects lived in a time of social ferment as Victorian values crumbled in the wake of World War I and women's lives radically changed. They were given to often excruciating self-analysis as they negotiated daringly and painfully unconventional marriages. Anchoring each biographical sketch to a marital crisis, Roiphe presents a singularly empathic view of the union of the talented and doomed Katharine Mansfield and John Middleton Murry, and dramatic insights into the dynamic between H. G. Wells, his wife, and his pregnant lover, Rebecca West; the marriage and affairs of muse Ottoline Morrell; Radclyffe Hall's longtime lesbian relationship; and Vanessa and Clive Bell's elastic marriage and its impact on Vanessa's sister, Virginia Woolf. Bertrand Russell appears frequently, playing one dicey part in the unforgettable story of the indomitable writer Elizabeth Vonarmin and her awful marriage to Russell's monstrous brother. In each tale, Roiphe, inspired aesthetically and philosophically by the writings and lives of these social and artistic pioneers, offers sophisticated psychological, sexual, and social analysis, fashioning uncommonly affecting portraits of uncommon men and women. Seaman, Donna
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