Another Marvelous Thing, by Laurie Colwin

I am late to discovering Laurie Colwin's books, though I have seen references to them on many of my favorite blogs. I'd even read one of her essays in an anthology on cooking. But it was only last year that I finally read Home Cooking. About half-way through my library copy, I ordered my own copy, one of her novels, and this book of interconnected short stories.

I knew that they were about a couple having an affair. The back cover blurb told me that the two are "a tough-minded and tenderhearted woman and an urbane, old-fashioned older man [who] fall in love despite their differences, get married, and give birth to a child." This is just not true. I don't think whoever wrote this blurb actually read the stories - or maybe just read the first story and made an assumption about what happened next. Not knowing that it wasn't true, I read the stories with certain expectations and assumptions of my own - so I was a bit puzzled by where they were actually going, and the last two took me completely by surprise. It was the oddest reading experience I've had a long time.

There will be spoilers - actually accurate ones - below.

The first story, narrated by Frank, is an account of his affair with Billy, whom he refers to as "my mistress." (Billy occasionally refers to him as "my mistress" as well.) I've only just realized that this first story is the only one told in the first person. While we get other stories and sections of stories from Billy's point of view, it is always in the third person. So it is Frank's voice, Frank's account, which we hear first, and (more than I realized at the time) I measured the stories that followed against his point of view. It's clearer to me now, thinking back, that Billy is unhappy in the affair, though she is strongly drawn to Frank. Since from the false blurb I was expecting a happy ending, I thought that her scruples, her real love for her husband Grey, her sadness and weariness, were merely obstacles along the way to a truer love. Billy tries to break things off with Frank several times. When she does so again, in the fifth story, "Swan Song," I figured as Frank does that they "would part and rejoin, over and over, into the future." So (with that false blurb in mind), it was quite a surprise two stories later to find Billy in the hospital, about to give birth to her child with Grey. I knew at that point that Billy wouldn't leave her husband. I had to check the back cover again, because I thought maybe I had mis-read the blurb.

Truly, I feel like I need to read the whole book again, now that I understand what really happens.

Which isn't to say that I didn't enjoy it - I did, very much, even in my confusion. Laurie Colwin has such an elegant but easy narrative voice, and a wry sense of humor. I found Billy a very appealing character, one I appreciated more as my understanding of her changed, from seeing her through Frank's eyes to seeing her in herself. I took to Frank at once, seduced by that first story. But by the end of the book, I was glad to see the back of him.

I still have Happy All the Time on the TBR shelves, as well as More Home Cooking. I'm sure I'll be adding more of Laurie Colwin's books. I still have a Barnes & Noble gift card tucked away somewhere.