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The Edge of Marriage
In nine stories of choice, discovery, and change, the characters in this extraordinary debut collection ride the wavering line between commitment and promise. In "Claude Comes and Goes," a husband confesses affection for his wife's former lover who is dying. In "Dyaesthesia," a wife struggles with her responsibility for her adulterous husband after he is maimed in an accident. In the title story, a husband confronts his wife's breakdown and his own surfacing resentments. In language that is eloquent and moving, Kaplan's stories speak to the mystery and pleasure of friendship, love, and marriage. This startling and powerful collection is illuminated by keen insight and hope.
- GenresShort StoriesFiction
192 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1999
About the author
Hester Kaplan
12 books47 followersI write and I teach writing, and I love to talk about books and writing. I come from a family of writers, and have seen how much publishing and book promotion has changed. I really like the ability to talk to readers through sites like Goodreads, and I'd love to hear from you.
"The Tell" is about marriage--a great interest of mine--and the limits of knowing another person. It is also about addiction and lies, and the recovery of trust.
Let me know what you think about the book!
"The Tell" is about marriage--a great interest of mine--and the limits of knowing another person. It is also about addiction and lies, and the recovery of trust.
Let me know what you think about the book!
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
September 21, 2009
This was the best dollar I ever spent on a book! Although, I enjoyed it so much I feel a bit guilty for not buying it for full price. (Thank you, Catholic guilt!)
Nine stories, all of them rich, different, touching. Usually short stories leave me wanting more, or don't give me enough, in terms of character development or the story itself.
All of these are just right. Not too much, not too little. Just right.
Kaplan is a talented writer and I will be more than willing to pay full price for any of her books in the future.
Nine stories, all of them rich, different, touching. Usually short stories leave me wanting more, or don't give me enough, in terms of character development or the story itself.
All of these are just right. Not too much, not too little. Just right.
Kaplan is a talented writer and I will be more than willing to pay full price for any of her books in the future.
March 3, 2009
If you like this quote, you'll like her writing: “John, don’t get up,” Warren says. I can tell he has just shaved that baby face of his because his skin flashes in different shades of pale. He reminds me of someone in a Victorian novel who dies after breaking a leg trying to catch a lady’s hat which has floated away in the breeze. Gallant but a little embarrassing.” From “The Edge of Marriage” by Hester Kaplan, the story is: The Spiral.
Great short stories. I find the writing impressive. Kind of mysterious characters. It's interesting the way the author unravels little bits of them before you with great timing.
Great short stories. I find the writing impressive. Kind of mysterious characters. It's interesting the way the author unravels little bits of them before you with great timing.
May 21, 2008
Ever been married? Ever known a married person? There you have it: anyone would appreciate this book. Her story about the husband who loses his arm in an accident while he was cheating on his wife is absolutely heartbreaking.
June 27, 2017
Very weird read ! I hated the first story SO MUCH and then loved everything from there. "Would you know it wasn't Love" is so negative and reminds me of the worst of humanity. The narrators head is hell for me to live in. It reminds me in a good way how flawed people are, but on the flip side just brings me down. Both the wonderful thing about YA fiction, and the thing that keeps me emotionally stunted and naive is how positive or at least hopeful things tend to be. Not a lot of truth spilling in the horrible and aged sort of way this book presented. Every story after the first was interesting, captivating, and a lot more bearable to read. I find it fascinating how many stories were so fully told in such a TINY paperback book. Each left me wanting to know more, but understanding that this length was exactly what the tale was meant to be. Worth the read.
September 29, 2024
I was blown away by this collection when I read it about twenty years age, which is why it resides so much in my memory as a great work. This time around, I could see the skill involved—Kaplan is a remarkable writer—but at the same time, I felt more manipulated. I'm not as much of a fan of fiction as I once was. What made me like fiction was that I felt like I was getting a deeper glimpse into the society and the people in it than one could get from nonfiction; these days, though, I tend to feel all the more the writer's use of puppet strings, the artistry of the fiction itself, which rather undoes the mistique of genuiness I used to find in such works.
Most of the stories in Kaplan's first collection, as one might expect from the title, revolve around marriages in some state of disrepair. “Would You Know It Wasn't Love?” subtly hints at a man's growing dimensia even as it revolves around a grown daughter who has come back to live with her parents after her marriage has proven to be somewhat less than satisfactory; the dad is not too keen on this, even while the mother seems perfectly fine with the situation.
“Dysaesthesia” is the most powerful story in the collection and the one that probably sold me most on the book when I first read it. An older first-time wife who married in part just to be able to have a marriage and family finds herself with a husband, an art professor, who is a prolific cheater, even as she attempts to raise their daughter, who idealizes both parents. The issue, however, is that one of those cheating sections goes disastrously awry, and now the wife finds herself the likely caretaker to a mostly disabled and unemployable husband. Were it not for the daughter, I would figure this marriage would be on its way to a quick divorce. As it is, however, one really ends up feeling just awful for this woman and the family in general—and even a bit of the husband's frustration.
“From Where We've Fallen” involves another couple with an adult child, this one a kid who can't hold down a job except as employed by his dad. Alas, even that is tenuous, as the son's actions put his father's business in jeopardy, and the father finds himself lying to protect his family but in the process hurting others.
“Cuckle Me” focuses on an old man and his youngish female caretaker, one who has come to love him almost as a husband, even as the man's son isn't particularly keen on the closeness that has arisen between the two.
The title story focuses on an older couple, the wife of whom has lost her best friend, leaving of course just her husband as her main social conduit. The story basically details how our relationships change with age. “Goodwill” walks a similar line, this time with a daughter grieving her mother's death, as she goes through her mother's things deciding what to keep and what to throw away (probably the weakest story in the collection, insofar as there are no real surprises here, and it seems mostly just a laundry list of items attached to memories).
“Claude Comes and Goes” focuses on a couple and their best friend—an ex-lover of the wife's, who lives a stereotypical bachelor life: different women all the time, never eating at home, and so on. In this case, Claude tries to establish a relationship with a grown daughter of his who had previously never met, but as with so many such storylines, the bachelor finds that his no-connections lifestyle is not conducive to suddenly having a relative care about him.
“The Spiral” focuses on a stairwell in a house's center, and a couple's relationship with it, with the older not-so-healthful husband confined to the downstairs and the wife with her own life upstairs, until of course life changes the way they use the different parts of the house.
“Live Life King-Sized” focuses on a grown son who takes care of a resort that his family owns. But really, it's about that son's relationship with a man and his wife, a man who has decided to live out the rest of his life, what little there is of it, at the resort, scaring away other patrons in the process.
Most of the stories in Kaplan's first collection, as one might expect from the title, revolve around marriages in some state of disrepair. “Would You Know It Wasn't Love?” subtly hints at a man's growing dimensia even as it revolves around a grown daughter who has come back to live with her parents after her marriage has proven to be somewhat less than satisfactory; the dad is not too keen on this, even while the mother seems perfectly fine with the situation.
“Dysaesthesia” is the most powerful story in the collection and the one that probably sold me most on the book when I first read it. An older first-time wife who married in part just to be able to have a marriage and family finds herself with a husband, an art professor, who is a prolific cheater, even as she attempts to raise their daughter, who idealizes both parents. The issue, however, is that one of those cheating sections goes disastrously awry, and now the wife finds herself the likely caretaker to a mostly disabled and unemployable husband. Were it not for the daughter, I would figure this marriage would be on its way to a quick divorce. As it is, however, one really ends up feeling just awful for this woman and the family in general—and even a bit of the husband's frustration.
“From Where We've Fallen” involves another couple with an adult child, this one a kid who can't hold down a job except as employed by his dad. Alas, even that is tenuous, as the son's actions put his father's business in jeopardy, and the father finds himself lying to protect his family but in the process hurting others.
“Cuckle Me” focuses on an old man and his youngish female caretaker, one who has come to love him almost as a husband, even as the man's son isn't particularly keen on the closeness that has arisen between the two.
The title story focuses on an older couple, the wife of whom has lost her best friend, leaving of course just her husband as her main social conduit. The story basically details how our relationships change with age. “Goodwill” walks a similar line, this time with a daughter grieving her mother's death, as she goes through her mother's things deciding what to keep and what to throw away (probably the weakest story in the collection, insofar as there are no real surprises here, and it seems mostly just a laundry list of items attached to memories).
“Claude Comes and Goes” focuses on a couple and their best friend—an ex-lover of the wife's, who lives a stereotypical bachelor life: different women all the time, never eating at home, and so on. In this case, Claude tries to establish a relationship with a grown daughter of his who had previously never met, but as with so many such storylines, the bachelor finds that his no-connections lifestyle is not conducive to suddenly having a relative care about him.
“The Spiral” focuses on a stairwell in a house's center, and a couple's relationship with it, with the older not-so-healthful husband confined to the downstairs and the wife with her own life upstairs, until of course life changes the way they use the different parts of the house.
“Live Life King-Sized” focuses on a grown son who takes care of a resort that his family owns. But really, it's about that son's relationship with a man and his wife, a man who has decided to live out the rest of his life, what little there is of it, at the resort, scaring away other patrons in the process.
July 16, 2021
As Jane Austen observed so long ago, human nature is well disposed toward those in interesting situations. Hester Kaplan has a way of imagining not just interesting but fascinating situations for couples, married or not, with or without children. A wife reckons with a husband grossly disabled by an accident that happened as he was cheating on her; a father yaws between disgust at and dangerous overprotection of his grown but underfunctioning son; a couple finds themselves caring for the wife's ex-lover who is dying of cancer.
I came to the party late, discovering this book more than twenty years after publication, but I couldn't be more enthused about it. Each of the nine stories creates its own moral universe; and Kaplan infuses these realities with data from every sense. (I particularly appreciate her attention to smells.) She spears everyday annoying habits and shows honestly the depth of daily difficulties that produce them. The book lures with the easy appeal of gossip--who doesn't want to know what goes on in someone else's marriage?--but rewards with deeper insights into what makes all of us tick.
I found this description of a somewhat nondescript twenty-something employee particularly deft: "She had thin, colorless hair pulled back in a gather of cloth, and eyes so unremarkable you might assume she thought of nothing all day long. She gave no sign she understood directions when I gave them to her but always did what I asked. Even as I'd interviewed her for the job, and tried to coax from her more than a single-word response, I'd have bet she wouldn't last with us for very long. I hired her anyway."
This is the first of Kaplan's fiction I have read. By and large the characters are white and upper-middle-class, some identifiably Jewish, some not. Kaplan knows this world inside out and chronicles it excellently. I hope in later works she may explore more intersections between this circle and people who didn't grow up in it.
I came to the party late, discovering this book more than twenty years after publication, but I couldn't be more enthused about it. Each of the nine stories creates its own moral universe; and Kaplan infuses these realities with data from every sense. (I particularly appreciate her attention to smells.) She spears everyday annoying habits and shows honestly the depth of daily difficulties that produce them. The book lures with the easy appeal of gossip--who doesn't want to know what goes on in someone else's marriage?--but rewards with deeper insights into what makes all of us tick.
I found this description of a somewhat nondescript twenty-something employee particularly deft: "She had thin, colorless hair pulled back in a gather of cloth, and eyes so unremarkable you might assume she thought of nothing all day long. She gave no sign she understood directions when I gave them to her but always did what I asked. Even as I'd interviewed her for the job, and tried to coax from her more than a single-word response, I'd have bet she wouldn't last with us for very long. I hired her anyway."
This is the first of Kaplan's fiction I have read. By and large the characters are white and upper-middle-class, some identifiably Jewish, some not. Kaplan knows this world inside out and chronicles it excellently. I hope in later works she may explore more intersections between this circle and people who didn't grow up in it.
October 27, 2008
I read the first story in this collection while I was on the elliptical machine at the gym, and I was embarrassed to be all teary-eyed in public. As I read, I had to stop after each story to collect myself. The stories take even the most mundane events and deftly draw out the powerful emotions connected to them. I was very impressed.
Update: I keep going back to this collection--and it's rare for me to love a short story enough to re-read it--and I can't get over how devastating and acute these portrayals of marriages are.
Update: I keep going back to this collection--and it's rare for me to love a short story enough to re-read it--and I can't get over how devastating and acute these portrayals of marriages are.
Currently Reading
November 18, 2008I have only made it through the first two short stories. They are beautifully written but too intense to read quickly, meaning without two week breaks between chapters. If you like having your heart tugged at --HARD--this is the book for you.
August 12, 2009
This is a book of short stories about big, difficult changes within marriages. I thought it would be depressing, but it was very interesting. It is beautifully written and the stories are all very different from one another - very different scenerios, told from various perspectives.
May 1, 2013
I read this book after really enjoying the author's recent novel "The Tell." Nine wonderful short stories with great detail about the nuances and joys and despairs of an average life. I love her writing style and her descriptions of some of the uglier sides of life are laugh out loud funny.
February 16, 2013
Smart and generous, with an incredible eye to the things in life that actually matter. I loved this collection and wish she'd write more and more!
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews