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Cultural critic Roiphe delves deeply into one of the most layered of subjects: marriage. Drawn in part from the private memoirs, personal correspondence, and long-forgotten journals of the British literary community from 1910 to the Second World War, here are seven "marriages à la mode"--each rising to the challenge of intimate relations in more or less creative ways: H.G. and Jane Wells; Katherine Mansfield; Vera Brittain and George Gordon Catlin; Vanessa and Clive Bell; and Vanessa's sister Virginia Woolf, herself no stranger to marital particularities, who sustained a brilliant running commentary on the most intimate details of those around her. Every chapter revolves around a crisis that occurred in each of these marriages, and how it was resolved--or not. In these portraits, Roiphe evokes "the fluctuations and shifts in attraction, the mysteries of lasting affection, the endurance and changes in love, and the role of friendship in marriage."--From publisher description.… (more)
User reviews
This and other beautiful glimpses into the lives of the Bloomsbury set both inspire and intrigue in this book which manages to be both gossipy and erudite in its examination of seven literary marriages. A guilty pleasure that is not a guilty pleasure.