Category: Nonfiction

Books: Strangers: A Memoir of Marriage by Belle Burden

Would this book be so popular if the author had not been a high society Martha’s Vineyard housewife, Babe Paley’s granddaughter, and a Vanderbilt descendant? The simple answer is – no.

Still, it addresses every housewife’s deep fear of her husband cheating on her. It is like cancer – you may have it and not know about it. Hence, the popularity of the book. It is also intelligently written and offers some insights into women’s choices regarding marriage, career, and parenting. These insights are not particularly new or original. Belle Burden realizes she has traded safety and security for independence. She has consciously selected not to know or care about family finances and has focused on raising her children. The most original, probably, revelation of the book is that actually divorce is NOT the end of a woman’s life and can make a woman a better person!

What I find problematic about this book is that its main premise – living twenty years with a “stranger” – does not ring true. Whose fault is it that Belle Buden did not know much about her husband. He was visiting the family on weekends and spending one week with them at Martha’s Vineyard during the summer. The author points out as proof of her happy years with her husband the fact that he made family videos, that they had a common diary (as newlyweds), and that he was a caring parent ( except for doing baths and homework). The signs of a non-functioning family are in plain sight. This is though, the acceptable marriage model for stay-at-home mothers who are “provided” and have given up their careers. Well, who made this choice? The choice not to be interested in financial matters, not to go to work, not to deal with bosses and difficult colleagues, but instead drive the children to school and various activities, play tennis and go to parties, enjoy long walks, meet friends while the kids are at school, and basically take it easy! I am not sure the insights of such a female can be valid for the majority of modern women.

The shock of the husband’s not willing to explain why he left is a bit overplayed. He was alienated, not entirely present, very powerful, rich, and he already had his own life apart from the family. He just formalized through a divorce the choices he had already made. Makes you wonder what the author’s standards or notions of a good marriage were not to have noticed that.

The choice of a phony person and a narcissistic actress like Gwyneth Paltrow to play the main character in the future film Strangers is quite symptomatic, no?

Books: Question 7, by Richard Flanagan, 2023

Not quite a novel, the book is part memoir part journalistic non-fiction, and research-based fictionalization of the development of nuclear science leading to the creation of the atomic bomb.

It is a example of late-modernist type of literature where personal accounts mix with research and scientific exploration of (most frequently) atrocities committed by humanity against itself, wars, genocides, environmental disasters – of the type of W.G. Sebald and his book “The Rings of Saturn.” Or, to use Flanagan’s own example, it follows H. G. Wells, who, he argues, “reinvented journalism as literature, prefiguring much of what literature would become.” Unfortunately, that is indeed what much contemporary literature has become. One need only look at recent Nobel laureates such as Olga Tokarczuk and Annie Ernaux.

The most exciting pages of the book cover the affair between H.G.Wells and Rebecca West. They are full of psychological insight, stylistic craftsmanship, and literary history fictionalized in a hilarious ingenious way.

By contrast, the sections devoted to the author’s earliest memories, family history, and portraits of his parents and relatives come across as deeply narcissistic. The attempt to filter major historical events through intensely personal experience is often irritating, if not self-aggrandizing. Reading and interpreting history through a fictionalized “I” raises questions about the ethical implications of such an approach.

Flanagan’s philosophising about the past, is at best helpless – “the past stays with us, that what was, is and shall be”, what is happening has happened and will always happen and other similar “deep thoughts” sound hollow.

The title of the book is taken from a Chekhov’s story – and again Flanagan misinterprets Chekhov by trying to imbue some grand meaning into the question “Who loves longer.” Where Chekhov is parodying, Flanagan is sentimentalising. The latter is right about one thing – his book is asking questions, without providing answers. As in Chekhov’s stories “the only people who have all the answers are the fools.”

A Marriage at Sea: A True Story of Love, Obsession, and Shipwreck, Nonfiction by Sophie Elmhirst

A fascinating book, based on a true story about a failed ocean trip. On their way to New Zealand and approaching the Galapagos, the British seafarers Maurice and Maralyn get shipwrecked and spend 174 days on a life raft drifting in the Pacific. Their story is told so well by journalist Sophie Elmhirst that it makes you question whether there is any point in reading fiction. Elmhirst’s language is so understated, but her style is so powerful that it manages to create several metaphorical levels on top of this story of adventure and survival.

The first several parts of the book read like a thriller; the last two chapters of the book are heartbreaking. A sea voyage becomes a metaphor for marriage, partnership, love, and death. It is a must-read if you need a trigger to reflect on your own choices and your own voyages…