You need to sign in or sign up before continuing.
Take a photo of a barcode or cover
3.38 AVERAGE
3.38 AVERAGE
dark
emotional
funny
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
I loved the language and description in this book. I could visualize scenes crisply. The author was excellent at creating specific moods of the characters and I was shocked at the complex and layered perspectives coming from the women characters in this older novel written by a man. The characters were deeply flawed and Jerry was just unbearable at times but the tone felt like it was written with such a smirk that I found myself laughing out loud at the awfulness unfolding. All time favorite line was “I know that road like I know your ass”.
dark
emotional
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
This book is depressing. The worst perspective on marriage I've ever read. Honestly, it is so far from what my relationships with men have been like that it didn't come across as real. But then, I've been faithful to my husband for 17 years.
A great book to read if you are considering an adulterous affair, because you'll run away from that lover faster than I got this book out of the way (2 days). I would have never finished it if it weren't the book up for discussion this month. I'm interested to hear the other participants' opinions; it could tell alot about their life history.
A great book to read if you are considering an adulterous affair, because you'll run away from that lover faster than I got this book out of the way (2 days). I would have never finished it if it weren't the book up for discussion this month. I'm interested to hear the other participants' opinions; it could tell alot about their life history.
Well, wonderful. Despite the authors making a joke he called it a 'romance' because people didn't behave that way any more, the book is acutely correct in its understanding of the evolution of human desire and the description of the mental angst when facing the consequences. The characters' behaviour is nauseating, irritating, trying the readers' patience by being so understanding towards each other it leaves every one of them too many options. The multiple choice and indecision throughout the plot is the reason the last chapter works so well, or is even the only way the book could have ended, though not many readers appreciated it as far as I can gather from the comments.
I understand that the main point of the novel is that too much understanding between the divorcing parties does make the decision-making even more difficult and the divorce more painful, and it rang true to me.
I understand that the main point of the novel is that too much understanding between the divorcing parties does make the decision-making even more difficult and the divorce more painful, and it rang true to me.
reflective
sad
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
More than thirty years ago I read Marry me and it made a big impression on me. Rereading it all these years later was a sheer pleasure. It is Updike’s typical stomping ground: couples, marriages and adultery in a middleclass setting. I remember an interview in which Updike said of this subject matter: ‘If I haven’t exhausted it, then it certainly has exhausted me’.
In Marry me the story is about the married couples Jerry and Ruth and Richard and Sally. It is set in the early sixties in a small town in Connecticut. Jerry and Sally are having an affair and Jerry cannot decide whether or not to break up his marriage with Ruth and choose Sally. His indecisiveness is irritating, frustrating, almost debilitating. But this is just the point. At one stage in the story, Sally, waiting for Jerry to make up his mind and no longer much at ease in her own house with Richard, decides to go and stay with her brother in Florida for a while. Then follows this exchange between Ruth and Jerry:
[Ruth]: Why?
[Jerry]: The bind was getting to be too much for her.
[Ruth]: What bind? What is bind, exactly?
[Jerry]: A bind is when all the alternatives are impossible. Life is a bind. It’s impossible to live forever, it’s impossible to die. It’s impossible for me to marry Sally, it’s impossible for me to live without her. You don't know what a bind is because what’s impossible doesn’t interest you. Your eyes just don’t see it.
Jerry’s eyes see the bind all too acutely. He longs to be free of the bind, he feels the constriction in his lungs (he has astma) when the bind presses too much. But in the end, his conclusion that life is a bind, is inescapable. In the short but beautiful last chapter (called ‘Wyoming’, since that is where Jerry and Sally dreamed of building a new life together), Jerry alternately imagines how eloping to Wyoming might have been, in reality goes to the South of France with Ruth and his children and finally, goes on his own to the tropical beauty of St Croix. Here he muses: ‘The existence of this place satisfied him that there was a dimension in which he did go, as was right, at that party, or the next, and stand, timid and exultant, above the downcast eyes of her gracious, sorrowing face, and say to Sally, Marry me.’ A dimension outside of the bind, so to say, which is impossible to find in real life.
Updike’s writing is sensitive, precise and insightful, and his dialogue as the couples woo, bicker and fight is impressive. I think I would normally rate this book with four stars, but in this particular instance I am adding one for sentimental value.
In Marry me the story is about the married couples Jerry and Ruth and Richard and Sally. It is set in the early sixties in a small town in Connecticut. Jerry and Sally are having an affair and Jerry cannot decide whether or not to break up his marriage with Ruth and choose Sally. His indecisiveness is irritating, frustrating, almost debilitating. But this is just the point. At one stage in the story, Sally, waiting for Jerry to make up his mind and no longer much at ease in her own house with Richard, decides to go and stay with her brother in Florida for a while. Then follows this exchange between Ruth and Jerry:
[Ruth]: Why?
[Jerry]: The bind was getting to be too much for her.
[Ruth]: What bind? What is bind, exactly?
[Jerry]: A bind is when all the alternatives are impossible. Life is a bind. It’s impossible to live forever, it’s impossible to die. It’s impossible for me to marry Sally, it’s impossible for me to live without her. You don't know what a bind is because what’s impossible doesn’t interest you. Your eyes just don’t see it.
Jerry’s eyes see the bind all too acutely. He longs to be free of the bind, he feels the constriction in his lungs (he has astma) when the bind presses too much. But in the end, his conclusion that life is a bind, is inescapable. In the short but beautiful last chapter (called ‘Wyoming’, since that is where Jerry and Sally dreamed of building a new life together), Jerry alternately imagines how eloping to Wyoming might have been, in reality goes to the South of France with Ruth and his children and finally, goes on his own to the tropical beauty of St Croix. Here he muses: ‘The existence of this place satisfied him that there was a dimension in which he did go, as was right, at that party, or the next, and stand, timid and exultant, above the downcast eyes of her gracious, sorrowing face, and say to Sally, Marry me.’ A dimension outside of the bind, so to say, which is impossible to find in real life.
Updike’s writing is sensitive, precise and insightful, and his dialogue as the couples woo, bicker and fight is impressive. I think I would normally rate this book with four stars, but in this particular instance I am adding one for sentimental value.
4.5
-‘How can I live without you?’
-‘The same way I live without you. By not living most of the time.’
Over their shoulder, there is the Sound and there’s a little sailboat and some town far off. The waves are coming in to the rocks and it’s sunny and it’s beautiful. It’s a perfect day to love and to be loved.
Jerry and Sally are an attractive couple, ordinary but striking.
Jerry loves Sally and Sally adores him, but unfortunately they are married to other people. Jerry and Sally are lovers who want more than spending a couple of hours in each other’s company.
Why did you marry him in the first place?
What is to be done? Should they inform their spouses about their affair and ask for divorce? Should they continue deceiving them? Or should they end it, for the sake of their children?
We were caught at being human.
In this tale of love, passion, devotion and betrayal, we come face to face with one man’s confusion, anger and guilt and a woman’s fear of abandonment, frustration and dejection.
Throughout the story, we may pity them, we may judge them. We may agree with one or the other. We may scold, reprove or encourage. But what we can't do, what we are unable to do, is help who we fall in love with.
All trips have that possibility of no return.
-‘How can I live without you?’
-‘The same way I live without you. By not living most of the time.’
Over their shoulder, there is the Sound and there’s a little sailboat and some town far off. The waves are coming in to the rocks and it’s sunny and it’s beautiful. It’s a perfect day to love and to be loved.
Jerry and Sally are an attractive couple, ordinary but striking.
Jerry loves Sally and Sally adores him, but unfortunately they are married to other people. Jerry and Sally are lovers who want more than spending a couple of hours in each other’s company.
Why did you marry him in the first place?
What is to be done? Should they inform their spouses about their affair and ask for divorce? Should they continue deceiving them? Or should they end it, for the sake of their children?
We were caught at being human.
In this tale of love, passion, devotion and betrayal, we come face to face with one man’s confusion, anger and guilt and a woman’s fear of abandonment, frustration and dejection.
Throughout the story, we may pity them, we may judge them. We may agree with one or the other. We may scold, reprove or encourage. But what we can't do, what we are unable to do, is help who we fall in love with.
All trips have that possibility of no return.
slow-paced
dark
funny
hopeful
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
This is a generous rating for this book, but I have a lot of tenderness for it--for Jerry, for Ruth, for Richard, and I guess even for Sally, all whom I got to know well as I made my way through the book. I also read this, my first Updike book, at a time of tumult--my last finals of my freshman year, an old classmate of mine passed, and I was tying up the lose ends of my social life which did little to fend off my terminal loneliness--and found it strange but somehow comforting to return to these characters through it all.
I was stunned by the beauty of some of the lines of the book, of how real the characters seemed, of the smartness of the dialogue, even through the boringness of the story. This book is a wonderful meditation on real love and how it relates to marriage, adultery, etc. What can real love overcome, and what can it not? Can it overcome our own narcissism, our inability to take control of our fate? I guess what I'm trying to explain is that there is nothing overtly special about this book, but there is something special about it to me. I recommend this book to anyone with a large reserve of patience.
I was stunned by the beauty of some of the lines of the book, of how real the characters seemed, of the smartness of the dialogue, even through the boringness of the story. This book is a wonderful meditation on real love and how it relates to marriage, adultery, etc. What can real love overcome, and what can it not? Can it overcome our own narcissism, our inability to take control of our fate? I guess what I'm trying to explain is that there is nothing overtly special about this book, but there is something special about it to me. I recommend this book to anyone with a large reserve of patience.