5 Fascinating Novels about Marriage

Deep Water, by Patricia Highsmith
Highsmith didn’t have a very rosy view of human nature, and based on this novel of simmering rage and murder, she didn’t care much for marriage, either. We join the marriage in media res, after all the love and trust has already leaked out, with Vic very aware of wife Melinda’s adulteries, which he tolerates with apparent disinterest as he pursues his own solitary hobbies. Highsmith imagines marriage to be a process of decaying affection combined with rising resentment, leading to an explosion of violence and anger. She then adds a twist: one of the spouses is a sociopath who presents a mild, even virtuous face to the neighborhood while masking darker impulses.

Fates and Furies, by Lauren Groff
Groff’s remarkable new novel focuses solely on the relationship between Lancelot (nicknamed Lotto) Satterwhite and his wife, Mathilde Yoder. The book is divided into two sections; the first tells the tale of their relationship from Lotto’s bright and superficial point of view, the second from Mathilde’s darker and more manipulative one. Groff deftly depicts the true nature of marriage: a partnership, with each spouse providing something the other lacks, supporting each other in the places they are weak, and often knowing the other person better than they know themselves. With Lotto’s opening section providing the puzzles and Mathilde’s the solutions, Fates and Furies is an engrossing look at an intimate relationship.

Too Far to Go, by John Updike
Updike had a unique style and viewpoint, and the characters in his stories and novels, especially the men, could be very predictable in their attitudes, lusts, and fears. This collection of stories exploring a relationship and marriage from first date to post-divorce kiss is a product of that unique Updike style. From the initial nervousness of meeting someone you simply must know better, to the final exhausted familiarity between two people who know each other so well they can no longer be together, Updike makes every moment along the way interesting and meaningful, rendering this a remarkable book for anyone who has ever been married.

Revolutionary Road, by Richard Yates
Yates’ novel of 1950s suburban malaise is almost a horror story, presenting a bleak portrait of mid-century American life as one where dreams go to die. Frank and April start off as ambitious people convinced of their unique place in the world, a conviction that’s slowly stripped away until a final desperate plan to leave everything behind and move to Paris is their last hope—a hope destroyed when April becomes pregnant with an unwanted child. As even the unrealistic dream of moving to the City of Light drains away, the spouses turn on each other, venting their disappointment with their own lives and decisions on each other with horrific results. What makes it an enduring work of American literature is not so much its focus on the emotional mechanics of a marriage as it is its stark examination of the lies we tell ourselves about ourselves, and how a spouse can enable those lies, or destroy them.

The Time Traveler’s Wife, by Audrey Niffenegger
An unconventional story about a marriage, certainly, and if Niffenegger had stopped with a science fiction tale of a man unstuck in time and the woman he falls in love with struggling to piece together their fractured narrative, it wouldn’t have been the success it was. Niffenegger’s genius is in exploring the relationship and the subtext concerning gender roles in the traditional “fairy tale” concept of marriage: Clare meets her future husband for the first time (from her perspective) as a child, spends her youth meeting him intermittently as he remains an elusive dream, marries and starts a family with him, and then spends the rest of her life waiting for him. It’s easy to look at this not as a romance, but rather an indictment of the traditionally “romantic” view of marriage from a woman’s perspective, as a passive object waiting for a man’s love to act on them, a role pressed onto many women in their childhoods by endless pop culture imagery.