The Forever Marriage
A Novel
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5.0 • 1 Rating
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- $2.99
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- $2.99
Publisher Description
A “scintillating . . . sharp and unsentimental” portrait of a marriage and a woman facing her own imperfect past from the acclaimed author of Forgiveness 4 You (The Washington Post).
When her husband, Jobe, dies in their home one cool April morning, Carmen Garrett feels a mix of horror and excitement. Having always been more indebted to Jobe than in love with him, she is now finally free to live her life—finally done with the lie of their happiness. But as she helps her three children grieve, she discovers, after a tryst with her most recent lover, that her own life may be in danger.
Her emotions reeling, Carmen reflects on the fateful days of her youth that made her the person she has become: privileged suburban wife, unfaithful widow, mother of a child with Down syndrome, fierce friend.
The Forever Marriage draws comparison to the best work of Anne Tyler, Elizabeth Berg, and Alice Sebold as it “poignantly and powerfully illustrate[s] the great and often tragic ironies of life” (Minneapolis Star-Tribune).
“With quiet power, Bauer explores the isolation, betrayal, duty, and, finally, compassion that constitute an unhappy marriage.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
With quiet power, Bauer explores the isolation, betrayal, duty, and, finally, compassion that constitute an unhappy marriage. When Carmen Garrett's husband, Jobe, dies, she finally feels the reprieve she's spent her 21-year marriage waiting for. She and Jobe had been profoundly ill-suited: Jobe, a solemn and awkward math prodigy, had been intimidated by the potency of Carmen's desires, while Carmen had been bound to Jobe by gratitude and obligation rather than love. Carmen an unfaithful wife and the loving but resentful mother of three children is an unlikely sympathetic figure, yet she is unsparingly, at times laceratingly, candid about her own shortcomings, and is disoriented by the loss she feels for a man she has spent her adult life wishing away. Only weeks after Jobe dies of lymphoma, Carmen is diagnosed with breast cancer, accepting the turn of events with the grim equanimity of a convict submitting to a death sentence. With lovely prose and fine pacing, Bauer (A Wild Ride Up the Cupboards) offers a sensitive portrait of a flawed woman coming to terms with a lifetime of regrets.
