Seven Books That Explore How Marriage Really Works
Everyone wants to get inside of someone else’s marriage. That’s the appeal behind TV shows such as Couples Therapy and the therapist Esther Perel’s podcast Where Should We Begin?—and The New York Times’ recent report on the separation of former New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio and his wife, Chirlane McCray. Matrimony, for all its mundanity, carries a mysterious aura: How might it alter the ways two people love? How might it fundamentally change who they are? But I’d argue that these are questions best suited for a novelist’s scrutinizing attention. From the awkward flirtations that portend Darcy and Elizabeth’s eventual union in Pride and Prejudice through Rachel Samstat’s acidic divorce in Nora Ephron’s Heartburn and into the present day, novels have, for centuries, deftly prodded the nature of wedlock and its continuing allure.
The sharpest writing on marriage does not always end with crisp resolution—with a wedding, death, or divorce. The
