Rough Strife

Fülszöveg

In an age when marriage seems hke a hngering bad joke, Lynne Sharon Schwartz has written a serious, witty and elegant novel of married love and hate — of the sexual and moral mysteries that bind and maintain a man and woman through twenty years of rough strife.
Caroline and Ivan are far from "well matched." Ivan runs a foundation for the arts; he is diplomatic and elusive in some ways, primitive in others; Caroline is bewitched at once by his "seductive contradictions." She is a mathematician — austere, analytical and demanding; he is intrigued by a wildness beneath her efficient surface. Starting with their vivid first meeting at a wedding party in Rome and continuing through their phases in Boston, a college town in Connecticut and New York City, Lynne Schwartz dismantles the conventional images of male and female natures, roles and expectations and lets them shift into surprising patterns.
Initially Caroline is sexually eager; Ivan holds back. But when she wants a summer... Tovább

Fülszöveg

In an age when marriage seems hke a hngering bad joke, Lynne Sharon Schwartz has written a serious, witty and elegant novel of married love and hate — of the sexual and moral mysteries that bind and maintain a man and woman through twenty years of rough strife.
Caroline and Ivan are far from "well matched." Ivan runs a foundation for the arts; he is diplomatic and elusive in some ways, primitive in others; Caroline is bewitched at once by his "seductive contradictions." She is a mathematician — austere, analytical and demanding; he is intrigued by a wildness beneath her efficient surface. Starting with their vivid first meeting at a wedding party in Rome and continuing through their phases in Boston, a college town in Connecticut and New York City, Lynne Schwartz dismantles the conventional images of male and female natures, roles and expectations and lets them shift into surprising patterns.
Initially Caroline is sexually eager; Ivan holds back. But when she wants a summer affair, he insists on a marriage of passion. When Ivan withdraws into his work, Caroline wants a family. When she flees from family life, Ivan finds solace in their two daughters. Growth, conflict and even violence keep their marriage in a state of becoming, sustained by an abiding and stubborn commitment that causes as much grief as joy.
With the stunningly transparent writing that has won her shorter fiction a place in Best American Short Stories, the O'Henry Awards and the Pushcart Press Anthology, Lynne Schwartz illuminates the darker side of love
(continued from front flap)
and makes its bright side more radiant. In a tone at once wry and deeply positive, she tells the tale of a contemporary marriage in all of its complexity. And with the magic of realistic art, she transmutes the unique chemistry of two individual lives into the private history of a generation. Vissza