This is such a big story with all sorts of tangents and offshoots—psychological and anthropological and historical—but at its core it’s about a marriage, twenty years into the relationship, that’s at its possible end and told with so much humor and heartbreak and truth. And some understanding of truth—the truth about your life and your identity and your relationships—is embedded in all facets of this big, beautiful story.

Middle-aged and married, Elizabeth and Jack have the unequivocal suburbia life that has been so revised and redacted and transformed from their earlier, artistic, city life of their 20s that it barely resembles the life they remember wanting and fighting for. Having both escaped dreadful, traumatic pasts, their meeting, in the beginning, feels auspicious, but twenty years down the suburban road, they’re left questioning if they were ever soulmates, ever right for the other. Jack craves consistency and stability. Elizabeth craves adventure and “always waiting for a future that was better than her present.” As the book explores the problem with this marriage, the story seems to have us fall farther and farther down the rabbit hole. There’s no simple answer to Jack and Elizabeth—there’s a meandering, multi-level labyrinth in understanding the landscape of any marriage, and at this point in their marriage, in their lives—an ecotone, a tension between two worlds and two selves in conflict—they’re forced to come to some understanding of their own truths. They have to answer the question: Is their life together still the life worth fighting for, or has it changed too much from its origin that it’s better to burn it down?

This is such an overwhelmingly good book. It’s one to take your time with, soaking up all the delicious and dark places it takes you. It’s one I’ll read again and again.
( )

This is such a big story with all sorts of tangents and offshoots—psychological and anthropological and historical—but at its core it’s about a marriage, twenty years into the relationship, that’s at its possible end and told with so much humor and heartbreak and truth. And some understanding of truth—the truth about your life and your identity and your relationships—is embedded in all facets of this big, beautiful story.

Middle-aged and married, Elizabeth and Jack have the unequivocal suburbia life that has been so revised and redacted and transformed from their earlier, artistic, city life of their 20s that it barely resembles the life they remember wanting and fighting for. Having both escaped dreadful, traumatic pasts, their meeting, in the beginning, feels auspicious, but twenty years down the suburban road, they’re left questioning if they were ever soulmates, ever right for the other. Jack craves consistency and stability. Elizabeth craves adventure and “always waiting for a future that was better than her present.” As the book explores the problem with this marriage, the story seems to have us fall farther and farther down the rabbit hole. There’s no simple answer to Jack and Elizabeth—there’s a meandering, multi-level labyrinth in understanding the landscape of any marriage, and at this point in their marriage, in their lives—an ecotone, a tension between two worlds and two selves in conflict—they’re forced to come to some understanding of their own truths. They have to answer the question: Is their life together still the life worth fighting for, or has it changed too much from its origin that it’s better to burn it down?

This is such an overwhelmingly good book. It’s one to take your time with, soaking up all the delicious and dark places it takes you. It’s one I’ll read again and again. ( )

Peppered with great stuff - especially the opening - but never quite got me in a vice like The Nix did. ( )

I enjoyed it for the first 150 pages and then I started to really enjoy it. By drawing in so many threads, academia, rural life, East Coast elites, parenthood, motherhood specifically, placebo effects, psychology, marriage...it all worked really well and had a very emotional ending that was nearly suspiciously satisfying, but I decided to just enjoy it and not be a cynic.

While I found this novel a bit difficult to enter, ultimately it was incredibly rewarding. It unfolds the story of two individuals and their partnership, revealing the secrets they keep from each other and, often, themselves. I found this story of how we can begin to see ourselves clearly, and how that allows us to finally truly connect with others, moving and hopeful, "heartbreaking" blurbs on the back of the book notwithstanding. There are funny moments and sad moments, moments of insight and moments of confusion. This is a novel about humanness, the ways our pasts and the stories we tell ourselves about our pasts shape us, and the opportunity we have to "try out those [stories] that are most humane, most generous, most beautiful, most loving." ( )