A Happy Marriage

March 23, 2009
Yglesias (Fearless
) delivers his first novel in 13 years, an autobiographical and devastatingly raw appraisal of a nearly 30-year marriage. As the novel opens in 1975, 21-year-old Enrique Sabas, a high school–dropout literary wunderkind, has just met Margaret Cohen, a vivacious, beautiful budding graphic designer who will become the love of his life. Enrique and Margaret’s romantic and sexual misadventures during the first awkward weeks of their courtship are interspersed with scenes from the couple’s three decades together before Margaret succumbs to cancer: raising children, losing a parent, the temptation of an easy affair. Margaret’s physical decline and Enrique’s acknowledgment of guilt, inadequacy and a selfish desire to postpone his loss are described in blunt, heart-wrenching detail, and Enrique’s ongoing struggles to define the nature of masculinity, the significance of art and the value of marriage add a philosophical layer to the domestic snapshots. Although the couple’s privileged lifestyle can get in the way of the reader-character bond, the texture of their marriage and the pain of their loss will be familiar to anyone who has shared a long-term relationship.