Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 53
 I ran out of empathy half way through November 25, 2009
Bonnie Jaquith (New England)
I began reading this book and I felt bad for Pearlie. She seemed sweet but gullible. She seemed to long for love but she lived in her own dream world. When a total stranger appears at her door claiming to be a friend of her husband, she invites him into her home. This was the first of many times when I wanted to grab Pearlie by the shoulders and say in a firm but kindly voice, "Think about what you're doing!"
But Pearlie seemed to drift through her days, letting herself be led into one bad decision after another. I stopped wanting to shout at her to think about what she was doing and I began just shaking my head slowly from side to side and mentally sighing to myself. As the story wore on, I grew weary of this page after page. When was this girl going to learn?
Then I thought, I'm doing the same thing as Pearlie: I'm doing what makes me unhappy. In this case, reading this book. So I stopped reading, went to these reviews to see how the story would end to satisfy my curiosity, and moved on with my life. And, in doing so, found the redeeming ending I'd been looking for all along.
 Beautiful prose, lovely story November 21, 2009
Book Lover (Alpharetta, GA)
I don't think the story is too short or that the suprises are so overly suprising that they are unbelievable as some others have said. I just thought it was a beautiful story told in a haunting way which stays with you long after the story is done. I really think you will enjoy it.
Haunting and On Target November 13, 2009
Nicholas Puner
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
The Story of a Marriage is a deeply felt, deeply considered look at a slice of convincing real life: a love triangle between two men and one woman in which the men have been disposed, so to speak, to each other. It is a tale of nuances, of emotion and complication with various twists that can only imitate real not imaginary life.
Greer has thought about the extent that people, even people in intimate relationships, can really know each other, and what they take for granted. This is not a plot driven novel: there are few "events" per se. Nor is it an exercise in inevitability. What it is, completely, is a meditation on the human condition and the fidelity of the heart and soul as distinguished from corporeal fidelity, which is beyond most men. One of the most interesting aspects of the novel is Greer's exploration of Pearlie's apparent passivity in the face of losing her husband to his former lover.
The Story of a Marriage is a spare and absorbing novel.
 Apt Title November 10, 2009
Yolanda S. Bean (Chicago, IL)
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Well, this was an interesting novel. Short, but rather powerful in its own way. Well-written with strong characters. I enjoyed it, but just didn't love it. Maybe because I loved _The Confessions of Max Tivoli_ so much more? I really don't have any specific complaints, other than it was just missing that extra something to make it a wonderful book.
 San Francisco Dreaming September 21, 2009
Ennis Smith (New York, NY USA)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
An African American woman wrestles with her husband's mysterious past when a white man shows up on her doorstep and reveals that he was once the man's lover. Set in 1950's San Francisco, Greer's novel is a kind of Sophie's Choice filtered through the lens of Douglas Sirk. Greer keeps the melodrama at bay in an evocative portrait of postwar life, largely on the strength of the wife's first-person narrative voice. What emerges through the eyes of its wary, observant protagonist is an original snapshot of black life chafing against an America on the verge of its next revolution.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 53
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