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Adultery
Just after Louise DeSalvo gave birth to her first child, her husband confessed that he was having an affair. After surviving the crisis in her marriage, she began to read and write about adultery to explore the question of why people cheat. The result is this fun and compassionate book that draws upon the lives and works of literary figures such as Edith Wharton, Virginia Woolf, and Henry Miller to offer a transforming understanding of infidelity and marriage.
176 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1999
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91 people want to read
About the author
Louise DeSalvo
36 books74 followersLouise A. DeSalvo (born 1942) is an American writer, editor, professor, and lecturer who currently lives in New Jersey. Much of her work focuses on Italian-American culture, though she is also a renowned Virginia Woolf scholar.
DeSalvo and her husband raised their children in Teaneck, New Jersey before moving to Montclair to be closer to their grandchildren.
She also teaches memoir writing as a part of CUNY Hunter College's MFA Program in Creative Writing.
DeSalvo's publications include the memoir, Vertigo, which received the Gay Talese award and was also a finalist for Italy's Primo Acerbi prize for literature; Crazy in the Kitchen: Food, Feuds, and Forgiveness in an Italian American Family, which was named a Booksense Book of the Year for 2004.
DeSalvo is also a renowned Virginia Woolf scholar. She has edited editions of Woolf's first novel Melymbrosia, as well as The Letters of Vita Sackville-West and Virginia Woolf, which documents the controversial lesbian affair between these two novelists. In addition, she has written two books on Woolf, Virginia Woolf: The Impact of Childhood Sexual Abuse on Her Life and Work and Virginia Woolf's First Voyage: A Novel in the Making.
One of DeSalvo's most popular books is the writer's guide Writing as a Way of Healing: How Telling Our Stories Transforms Our Lives.
(from Wikipedia)
DeSalvo and her husband raised their children in Teaneck, New Jersey before moving to Montclair to be closer to their grandchildren.
She also teaches memoir writing as a part of CUNY Hunter College's MFA Program in Creative Writing.
DeSalvo's publications include the memoir, Vertigo, which received the Gay Talese award and was also a finalist for Italy's Primo Acerbi prize for literature; Crazy in the Kitchen: Food, Feuds, and Forgiveness in an Italian American Family, which was named a Booksense Book of the Year for 2004.
DeSalvo is also a renowned Virginia Woolf scholar. She has edited editions of Woolf's first novel Melymbrosia, as well as The Letters of Vita Sackville-West and Virginia Woolf, which documents the controversial lesbian affair between these two novelists. In addition, she has written two books on Woolf, Virginia Woolf: The Impact of Childhood Sexual Abuse on Her Life and Work and Virginia Woolf's First Voyage: A Novel in the Making.
One of DeSalvo's most popular books is the writer's guide Writing as a Way of Healing: How Telling Our Stories Transforms Our Lives.
(from Wikipedia)
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
September 9, 2012
(I would give this a 4.5 if Goodreads allowed me to.)
For those looking for a narrative memoir, this isn't it, though there is a narrative through line--DeSalvo's own husband's affair early in their marriage, right around the time she gives birth to their first child. It's more of an ongoing conversation with herself and the reader (and she uses some direct address to that effect that I found a bit precious). It's a conversation, too, with the literary greats she has steeped herself in over the years as a researcher, with Virginia Woolf, D.H. Lawrence, Henry Miller,and Collette, to name a few. These are the parts I liked best, where she is both biographer and diarist in a way that renders the intimate reading experience--reading about others to learn how to live, to shatter myths, to know that others struggle too.
I also loved that DeSalvo is a provocateur, rattling the cage of our most intractable cultural conventions,yet she does it in an unexpected way. This rattling is a personal journey; she doesn't provoke for effect, for grandiosity, or for gesture. She doesn't campaign for or against cultural institutions. She provokes to survive, nay, to live. She investigates the nature of marriage, fidelity, and autonomy in order to redefine them on her own terms so that her life/marriage is one that she can live with. One that she can thrive in. She tells not the salacious cultural adultery story, but a hopelessly more complex one. She says, "Some time after my husband confessed his affair to me, I looked into the bathroom mirror and thought that I might kill myself or that I would go back to graduate school and become economically independent as quickly as I could. This might sound like a strange set of choices for someone to have in such circumstances, but I can assure you that they presented themselves to my consciousness in precisely this way."
Her tolerance for ambivalence here as a writer is essential to its authenticity. No one believes a neat and tidy struggle; such a "struggle" is oxymoronic. The mind and heart are machines of ambivalence, made for reversals and stutter-steps, for great strides, and back-switches. Anyone who marches blithely forward must be an idiot or a politician. Or, as Yeats famously said, "The best lack all conviction, while the worst/ Are full of passionate intensity." Doubt, that beast that makes our lives so difficult, is key in memoir, and DeSalvo knows this.
DeSalvo's struggle seems largely an intellectual one, mostly because she chooses to reveal little of the emotional undercurrents beneath the thinking. She mounts a credible defense for privacy, for ownership of "her adultery story"/ "our adultery story." It's an interesting pose for a memoirist, and there are plenty of others in the genre who write the personal with a cool, clinical reserve. Didion comes to mind. Confessionalism is not the sine qua non of memoir. Still, it bothered me to be held at bay from her emotional world, or I should say, it bothered me that the reader doesn't earn access. We aren't let in any more at the end of the book than we were at the beginning, and this felt to me like a cheat. The emotional journey was one I wanted to go on, and here I reveal my own expectations as a reader. Nevertheless,the intellectual journey is rich, buoyant, and exciting.
For those looking for a narrative memoir, this isn't it, though there is a narrative through line--DeSalvo's own husband's affair early in their marriage, right around the time she gives birth to their first child. It's more of an ongoing conversation with herself and the reader (and she uses some direct address to that effect that I found a bit precious). It's a conversation, too, with the literary greats she has steeped herself in over the years as a researcher, with Virginia Woolf, D.H. Lawrence, Henry Miller,and Collette, to name a few. These are the parts I liked best, where she is both biographer and diarist in a way that renders the intimate reading experience--reading about others to learn how to live, to shatter myths, to know that others struggle too.
I also loved that DeSalvo is a provocateur, rattling the cage of our most intractable cultural conventions,yet she does it in an unexpected way. This rattling is a personal journey; she doesn't provoke for effect, for grandiosity, or for gesture. She doesn't campaign for or against cultural institutions. She provokes to survive, nay, to live. She investigates the nature of marriage, fidelity, and autonomy in order to redefine them on her own terms so that her life/marriage is one that she can live with. One that she can thrive in. She tells not the salacious cultural adultery story, but a hopelessly more complex one. She says, "Some time after my husband confessed his affair to me, I looked into the bathroom mirror and thought that I might kill myself or that I would go back to graduate school and become economically independent as quickly as I could. This might sound like a strange set of choices for someone to have in such circumstances, but I can assure you that they presented themselves to my consciousness in precisely this way."
Her tolerance for ambivalence here as a writer is essential to its authenticity. No one believes a neat and tidy struggle; such a "struggle" is oxymoronic. The mind and heart are machines of ambivalence, made for reversals and stutter-steps, for great strides, and back-switches. Anyone who marches blithely forward must be an idiot or a politician. Or, as Yeats famously said, "The best lack all conviction, while the worst/ Are full of passionate intensity." Doubt, that beast that makes our lives so difficult, is key in memoir, and DeSalvo knows this.
DeSalvo's struggle seems largely an intellectual one, mostly because she chooses to reveal little of the emotional undercurrents beneath the thinking. She mounts a credible defense for privacy, for ownership of "her adultery story"/ "our adultery story." It's an interesting pose for a memoirist, and there are plenty of others in the genre who write the personal with a cool, clinical reserve. Didion comes to mind. Confessionalism is not the sine qua non of memoir. Still, it bothered me to be held at bay from her emotional world, or I should say, it bothered me that the reader doesn't earn access. We aren't let in any more at the end of the book than we were at the beginning, and this felt to me like a cheat. The emotional journey was one I wanted to go on, and here I reveal my own expectations as a reader. Nevertheless,the intellectual journey is rich, buoyant, and exciting.
August 29, 2021
I love Louise's writing, and this book did not disappoint. She writes about her husband's reveal of an affair four years into their marriage when she was pregnant with their first child and how it affected a change in their relationship; about adultery through literary history; and facts from the Kinsey report, which she read as a girl, her mother went with her to the library to give permission for her to check it out.
I found this book brilliant. She relays the story Virginia Woolf wrote before she died, "The Legacy." A woman dies in a tragic accident, leaving her husband her journals. Reading them her affair unfolds and her husband learns her death was not an accident, but a contemplated action after her lover killed himself because she would not leave her husband. She was a totally different woman that her husband believed he knew.
I love that Louise's marriage survived her husband's affair despite pressure from friends telling her what to do. She says in response to the question frequently asked, how could she have forgiven him: "I reply that what he did didn't require forgiveness; it merited understanding, even empathy. His adultery signaled a challenge to our marriage; it didn't mean its end (unless he or I or we chose to end it)."
Revealing his affair gave her the drive to go back for her Masters so she could teach in college and start writing her books, so she would always be able to support herself. She had a strong sexuality as a young teen and had a long affair with a young man who had a steady girlfriend he eventually married. For a husband she wanted a secure attached relationship; she picked a husband, her criteria didn't change and they stayed together a lifetime. Louise was a feminist who was not afraid to go against common opinion.
I found this book brilliant. She relays the story Virginia Woolf wrote before she died, "The Legacy." A woman dies in a tragic accident, leaving her husband her journals. Reading them her affair unfolds and her husband learns her death was not an accident, but a contemplated action after her lover killed himself because she would not leave her husband. She was a totally different woman that her husband believed he knew.
I love that Louise's marriage survived her husband's affair despite pressure from friends telling her what to do. She says in response to the question frequently asked, how could she have forgiven him: "I reply that what he did didn't require forgiveness; it merited understanding, even empathy. His adultery signaled a challenge to our marriage; it didn't mean its end (unless he or I or we chose to end it)."
Revealing his affair gave her the drive to go back for her Masters so she could teach in college and start writing her books, so she would always be able to support herself. She had a strong sexuality as a young teen and had a long affair with a young man who had a steady girlfriend he eventually married. For a husband she wanted a secure attached relationship; she picked a husband, her criteria didn't change and they stayed together a lifetime. Louise was a feminist who was not afraid to go against common opinion.
May 20, 2019
I really enjoyed the first half of the book a ton... the second half felt like a bit of a curveball. The author's decision to keep her own adultery story (or non-story) a secret made logical sense. I understood her reasoning and why she made the decision not to share. But I still felt a little cheated. Maybe that was her intent! A book about cheating and I felt a little bit cheated on. Strong, powerful writing though. DeSalvo has a great voice and I found myself laughing out loud a lot in the early going. I would still recommend it.
May 9, 2019
Beautifully, thoughtfully written. So glad I came across this memoir while I searched for books on polyamory/non-monogamy. It often felt as though I was reading a book on polyamory as there was so much focus on what relationships need in order to be a living, growing thing and to remain interesting to those within them; and that is that they require ongoing communication and change and understanding. Concepts monogamous, non-monogamous and even the voluntarily unattached would benefit from.
April 30, 2025
Found this book from the reference of an academic paper. I was writing a research paper on the normalization of monogamous relationships, and this book provided invaluable information. It's an easy read. There is no flowery language, no absurd metaphors; it is to the point ideas on adultery and the author's experience of it. It's a good, quick read.
May 14, 2015
I bought this book because I wanted a firsthand account of someone who had salvaged a marriage from the scourge of infidelity and I happen to love DeSalvo's work. This is a powerful little book that is not in any way written as an overly dramatic, martyred, victim point of view memoir. DeSalvo explores her own past before she married and her own infidelities as she courted mostly clueless boyfriends. She ruminates on family of origin environments of both she and her husband as to how they replicating the past in their present bond. She also explores various authors and fictional characters whose motivations to act on their impulses to betray and the consequences of those impulses and her own situation. Her final 25 pages are some of the most beautiful prose but most importantly, the most insightful evaluation of the quality of a relationship, not just to another but to your self, that I have ever read. I actually copied it for a client to read who was struggling with exactly what DeSalvo was writing about. This should be required reading for all in relationships.
August 31, 2010
I love her other memoir and wanted to read this one so bad. This one read more text book style than an actual story. I couldnt finish it due to no actual sorry. It was more rantings and thoughts with a few short memories and storied dropped in. This was a sad read for me becuase I reallly enjoyed her other books.
September 23, 2009
What a unique little title this is!
August 28, 2013
Great summary of the history adultery plays in literature!
June 19, 2015
The writing is good, the preaching is bad.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews