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A review by houyhnhnm64
Marry Me: A Romance by John Updike
5.0
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.