Deborah Chasman

The essays in HERE LIES MY HEART (1999) give us an interesting variety of takes on the institution of marriage, as well as some very candid looks at divorce, cheating, adultery, forgiveness, etc. And from some very capable writers. Some of them are surprisingly moving, like Willie Morris, in the title piece, looking back decades later at his marriage, just out of college in Texas, how he and his bride went to Oxford, vacationed in Paris. An apartment in New York, a farmhouse in the country. How his career spiraled quickly upward and she became frustrated and angry. The marriage ended after ten years, but Morris never quite got over it. Indeed he never married again. After all the pain and anger and recriminations, he notes, "Finally I have learned how difficult love is, how hard to achieve and sustain, no matter who the person or how felicitous the circumstance."

"An Exile's Psalm" is Paul Doty's long poetic meditation on the loss of his long-time lover of twelve years, Wally, to AIDS, and his subsequent feelings of guilt and confusion at his good fortune in finding his new lover, Paul, a couple years later. (I'm not sure if gay marriage was legal anywhere in 1999.)

"On Living Alone" is Vivian Gornick's various feelings about an early marriage, a divorce, years of loneliness, of being "a walker in the city," and, finally, a platonic arrangement of living with another woman, a friend, to simply assuage the feelings of isolation.

One piece that decidedly dates the book is Joel Achenbach's "Homeward Bound," in which he cites Bill Cosby as a role model who got the formula right -

"You go home. You find little things to cherish. You have a favorite chair. You develop a coffee ritual, a storybook ritual, some running jokes."

Hmm... Too bad Cosby didn't stick to that formula. Although Achenbach also says - and this was almost twenty years ago, mind you:"Perhaps there were times when Cos didn't quite make it home." Indeed.

Another particular favorite here is Kate Jennings's "For Better or Worse." She's very hard-edged and realistic about her marriage, at nearly forty to a twice-divorced man twenty-five years older. She jokes wryly about actuarial tables and "reading the obituary page" more regularly. But she finds that an older husband is "extraordinarily supportive," and that "With age, the need in them to be cock of the walk has diminished." Summing up her decision to marry, she says -

"It is a job of work … there is something daffy about the whole enterprise."

Twenty separate pieces here, and something to gnaw on in every one. Like I said - a wide variety of viewpoints about marriage, fidelity, divorce and more here. Well worth the read, even twenty years late. I enjoyed it.

- Tim Bazzett, author of the memoir, BOOKLOVER… (meer)

Picked this up because I recognized several names and it's an interesting topic. As others have said, though, it's not well-balanced. Either needed more contributions from the unmarried or a different subtitle. The first half dozen or so pieces seemed too short and/or disjointed to accomplish anything, which is odd when you discover that they were deliberately chosen for re-publication here rather than being commissioned new and done half-heartedly. But the collection improved from there. And as the editor said, the final piece by Lynn Darling is stunning.… (meer)