People, you know you’re always asking me for book recs. So here’s one: A Happy Marriage, by Rafael Yglesias. It’s beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, devastatingly sad but also thrilling, from the point of view of a husband whose wife of 30 years is dying of cancer. Gorgeously written, SO deeply felt, so intimate and emotionally present and real. A book to love, truly.
Here’s what’s weird. Apparently it’s autobiographical. I mean, really autobiographical. As in, the book’s wife has the same name as Yglesias’s wife, who died of cancer in 2004. The book’s couple has two sons (same). The book’s husband is a writer who dropped out of high school at 16, in 1972, to publish his first novel (same). And later becomes a screenwriter (same). So, when the book’s husband flashes back to an affair he had with one of the wife’s best friends, and then doesn’t ever tell his wife . . . ?
Yeesh.
Anyway, though. Great book.
[...] [SPOILER ALERT], if you’re going to read one novel in which a 50-year-old woman dies hideously of cancer, I don’t recommend following that up [...]