State of the Union
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Average rating3.2
A heartbreaking, funny, and honest look inside of a marriage falling apart and the lengths a couple would go to in order to fix it from the bestselling author of Dickens and Prince, About a Boy and High Fidelity Now an Emmy award winning SundanceTV series starring Rosamund Pike and Chris O'Dowd Tom and Louise meet in a pub before their couple's therapy appointment. Married for years, they thought they had a stable home life--until a recent incident pushed them to the brink. Going to therapy seemed like the perfect solution. But over drinks before their appointment, they begin to wonder: what if marriage is like a computer? What if you take it apart to see what's in there, but then you're left with a million pieces? Unfolding in the minutes before their weekly therapy sessions, the ten-chapter conversation that ensues is witty and moving, forcing them to look at their marriage--and, for the first time in a long time, at each other.
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★ ★ ★ ★ 1/2 (rounded up)
This originally appeared at The Irresponsible Reader.
—
[Louise says,] “Underneath it all, I love you.”
“Underneath it all.”
“Yes.”
“Great.”
“To be honest, I think you should be happy with that. You're lucky there's anything still there.”
and
“How are new starts possible?” Louise says. “When you've been together for a long time, and you have kids, and you've spent years and years being irritated by the other person? But if they stop being irritating, they're not them anymore.”
“My text was me not being me.”
“Exactly.”
They walk to the door.
“So I've got to stay as me.”
“Yes.”
“While at the same time being different, somehow.”
“It's a conundrum.”
Note: I won a copy of this from Riverhead Books via Goodreads – and I thank them both for that. But my library got me a copy first, so I haven't read it yet. But it will be the copy I re-read (and I think I'll be doing that a lot).
