A Happy Marriage

A Novel

Rafael Yglesias

• Publisher: Scribner
• Year: 2009
• Print ISBN:
  9781439102312
• eBook ISBN:
  9781439109816
• Topic: Letteratura
• Subtopic: Letteratura generale

A Happy Marriage is both intimate and expansive: It is the story of Enrique Sabas and his wife, Margaret, a novel that alternates between the romantic misadventures of the first weeks of their courtship and the final months of Margaret's life as she says good-bye to her family, friends, and children -- and to Enrique. Spanning thirty years, this achingly honest story is about what it means for two people to spend a lifetime together -- and what makes a happy marriage.

Yglesias's career as a novelist began in 1970 when he wrote an autobiographical novel at sixteen, hailed by critics for its stunning and revelatory depiction of adolescence. A Happy Marriage, his first work of fiction in thirteen years, was inspired by his relationship with his wife, Margaret, who died in 2004. Bold, elegiac, and emotionally suspenseful, even though we know what happens, Yglesias's beautiful novel will break every reader's heart -- while encouraging all of us with its clear-eyed evocation of the enduring value of marriage.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Colophon
• Also by Rafael Yglesias
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Chapter One: Take-out Girl
• Chapter Two: Fatal Vision
• Chapter Three: Public School
• Chapter Four: Anhedonia
• Chapter Five: The Orphans’ Dinner
• Chapter Six: The Last Schedule
• Chapter Seven: The Competition
• Chapter Eight: The Good-bye Land
• Chapter Nine: First Date
• Chapter Ten: The Perfect Gift
• Chapter Eleven: First Kiss
• Chapter Twelve: Family Feeling
• Chapter Thirteen: The Great Seducer
• Chapter Fourteen: A Mother’s Love
• Chapter Fifteen: Lost Love
• Chapter Sixteen: Last Words
• Chapter Seventeen: A Happy Marriage
• Chapter Eighteen: Loveless
• Chapter Nineteen: Love Interrupted
• Chapter Twenty: Grief
• Chapter Twenty-One: At Last
• Acknowledgments