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When forty-four-year-old Amy O'Connell's husband Hugh tells her that he's leaving Dublin to backpack through Southeast Asia for six months without her and their three daughters, she doesn't know what to say. Sure, Hugh's been shutting her out since his father and best friend died one after the other, and she's worried. But will experimenting with a -- gulp -- open marriage for half a year really solve their problems? Or just create new ones?
That's the question in Marian Keyes's latest, The Break. Things would be easier if Hugh had a history as a cad. A wandering eye, a terrible temper, or even just a parsimonious spirit. But he's the kind, dependable man who made her believe in love after her awful first marriage -- and enrolled her in the cheese of the month club. Despite her daughters, her job as a celebrity publicist, and her suddenly Internet-famous mother, life without Hugh is still a slog, and Amy can barely get out of bed. So when her sister suggests that she reconnect with the crush she quashed a year ago, she doesn't dismiss it. What ensues is sometimes hilarious, sometimes heartbreaking, but always complicated and real.
Much more than an introspective Irish Hall Pass, The Break has all of the sparkly somethings that make Keyes's fiction addictive: snarky humor, madcap shopping sprees, and big, crazy, blended families. It also examines the conundrum of being both the woman scorned and the other woman, of wanting to even the score but also forfeit. In this way, it reminds me of some of her earlier novels, particularly Sushi for Beginners and The Other Side of the Story. It's an absorbing read for anyone, married or not, but will ring truest with wives.
The Break clocks in at six-hundred-and-sixty pages, but from the very first chapter, time flies. You won't care about the (time) commitment, but instead be caught up in that old Ladies' Home Journal column of a question: Can this marriage be saved?
