Marriage

How is a woman supposed to act, sitting by the hospital bedside of her husband in a coma from which he'll never return? Caroline's son the chef points out that dyeing her hair for the first time, right there in the hospital, is a weird choice. Caroline is also reliving the one perilous point in her marriage, when it seemed possible husband William might defect - to a beautiful fellow law student of their daughter's. Though in terror, she had adopted a chillingly controlled strategy of no sudden moves, knowing that 'if you were married the way she was, right to the nerve-endings, you lived in particular peril'. Mediocre marriages weren't in such jeopardy. David Sanderson is another anachronism, and he knows it. In the age of the uncommitted male, he is besottedly committed. His wife has been unfaithful and he minds like hell. Counsellors offer him forgiveness workshops, Prozac and Viagra. His wife offers slinky undies instead of the white cotton ones he loves. Why won't anyone accept the fact that he's not depressed he's heartbroken?
With a finely tuned ear for the emotional pitch of marital stress, Anne Taylor Fleming has a swipe at the personal defences and social bromides that impede the true romantic in the pursuit of true love. Her witty and captivating portrait of spouses in crisis challenges the ways we look at marriage today.