What Lies Beneath
The Story of a Marriage
By Andrew Sean Greer
208 pages. Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
Andrew Sean Greer's The Story of a Marriage (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) is a beautiful, lyrical novel of the 1950s in a country at war with itself—sexually repressed, patriotic, torn by racism, and smitten with domesticity. Narrated by Pearlie, a woman married to a man with secrets, this is a book full of urgent questions. "How could I possibly explain my marriage?" Pearlie asks. "Anyone watching a ship from land is no judge of its seaworthiness, for the vital part is always underwater. It can't be seen."
By Andrew Sean Greer
208 pages. Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
Andrew Sean Greer's The Story of a Marriage (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) is a beautiful, lyrical novel of the 1950s in a country at war with itself—sexually repressed, patriotic, torn by racism, and smitten with domesticity. Narrated by Pearlie, a woman married to a man with secrets, this is a book full of urgent questions. "How could I possibly explain my marriage?" Pearlie asks. "Anyone watching a ship from land is no judge of its seaworthiness, for the vital part is always underwater. It can't be seen."