Every summer I read a novel or short story collection from John Updike. A new work usually appears in the fall so it's always nice to have a novel I haven't read for a decade back in my hands. I chose Marry Me, his romance from 1976, the year he married his second wife, I believe. This is a virtual companion piece to Couples, his sprawling book about affairs in tiny Tarbox. While Couples needed a scorecard to keep track of the, well, couples, Marry Me has only four people, Jerry sleeping with Sally while married to Ruth who has a brittle affair with Sally's Richard. Got that? It's set in 1962 but the people seem oddly ahead of our generation of adults. They sat down, hashed out the affair over drinks, went to partiesm etc. Today, there would be slashed tires, threatening emails and "no she didn'ts" yelled at the top of their lungs.
I've reread Couples, A Month of Sundays, The Centaur and the novel that actually improved the second time, the brilliant Rabbit Is Rich. Like that installment, Marry Me held up even better than the first time I read it.
On deck: Gore Vidal's Julian, Anne Tyler's When We Were Married, and James Salter's Light Years.
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