THE DAYLIGHT MARRIAGE

The Daylight Marriage, Heidi Pitlor, Algonquin Books, 2015, 245 pp

 

 

This novel was the March, 2016, pick of the Nervous Breakdown Book Club. (I am trying to catch up reading the books I get from this subscription site, the only one I engage with. Yes, I am 2.5 years behind. Whatever.)

 

Heidi Pitlor is probably best known for being the series editor for The Best American Short Stories since 2007. She has also written two novels and this one is her second. I listened to the Otherppl podcast interview with her and it was fascinating to hear about the trials and rewards of working on The Best American Short Stories books year after year while raising twins and writing novels.

From the cover of the paperback I read, I thought The Daylight Marriage would be a nice little story about a marriage. I felt bored before I even read the first page. I should have looked more closely at that cover. Do you see how that vase is in midair with the water splashing out? By the end of the first chapter I was certainly not bored.

The story beings with a loud and terrible argument between Hannah and Lovell, her husband of almost 20 years. It is one of those arguments supposedly about one thing that dredges up years of unspoken grievances on both sides.

The next day Hannah disappears. The rest of the novel follows the aftermath of her disappearance in alternate chapters from Hannah's or Lovell's viewpoints. What I had expected turned into a crime story evolving from a marriage that was not good at all.

Though the book is short, it felt longer because the pace is a bit slow. Somehow though the suspense was all the more taut. In the end, I valued this novel several notches above such bestsellers as Gone Girl or The Girl on the Train. Heidi Pitlor does not use gimmicks, nor does she manipulate the reader's emotions. I felt it was as true as real life.

Two adults with personal baggage that made harmony and intimacy nearly impossible, made parenting a challenge. I was convinced that two basically decent people could cross a line, go over the edge, and destroy a relationship beyond repair.

I once wrote a song with this line in it: "Do you ever wonder if the time comes when it's too late?" In this affecting novel that time came for both husband and wife. There lies tragedy.

(The Daylight Marriage is available in various formats by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore.)