Talking In Bed: A Poignant Literary Women's Fiction Novel – A Devastating Love Triangle and a Life-Altering Choice

by Antonya Nelson

Two men meet briefly in a hospital, where both are visiting their dying fathers. They speak again just a few months later, when one of them impulsively calls the other, a psychologist, and a friendship of sorts starts to form. After the psychologist leaves his wife a few weeks later, she begins to fall in love with his friend, creating a triangle that threatens to destroy all three and their families. The wife must decide between two very different men, whom she loves in very different ways. As the focus of the novel turns toward the woman in the middle, it becomes increasingly clear that whomever she chooses, the effect on the lives of everyone involved will be immeasurable. Regret, fear, grief, anger, anxiety, wistfulness, and yearning - these people's lives hang tenuously in the balance of their own conflicting emotions. With remarkable grace and acuity, Antonya Nelson examines two families in the midst of uncertainty and self-doubt, in a moving, resonant novel that displays the ful

Genres: Fiction, India

289 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1996

About the author

Antonya Nelson is the author of nine books of fiction, including Nothing Right and the novels Talking in Bed, Nobody’s Girl, and Living to Tell. Nelson’s work has appeared in the New Yorker, Esquire, Harper’s, Redbook, and many other magazines, as well as in anthologies such as Prize Stories: The O. Henry Awards and The Best American Short Stories. She has received a Guggenheim Fellowship, an NEA Grant, the Rea Award for the Short Story, and, recently, the United States Artists Simon Fellowship. She is married to the writer Robert Boswell and lives in New Mexico, Colorado, and Texas, where she holds the Cullen Chair in Creative Writing at the University of Houston.

Reviews

[Elena Siemens · Rating 3 out of 5]

I chose this one out of a book box because of the cover so I had low expectations. I liked it but I also really didn’t

[Greg · Rating 3 out of 5]

I just noticed that this is her first novel. I wish I had known that when I started to read it. The novel is very uneven, there are some wonderful moments in the book, and sometimes the language, or a phrase, or a description are stunning, but overall the book falls apart. As a short story this could have been interesting. Actually as a short story this could have been really good, in a Raymond Carver way. There are parts of a characters action that can be accepted in a short story which need to be fleshed out in a novel, and she doesn't do this. The book isn't sparse enough to reach the interesting levels that Carver can achieve with a few choice phrases, but it's also not in depth enough to give any motivation to the drastic choices the characters make. But there is enough description given to the internal state of the characters, but nothing that the reader is necessarily given leads to what the characters do. I guess it's not psychological enough? I don't know what I think it should have been more of. I think rather it would have been more interesting if this had been a bit colder of a book, where the reader could fill in the inner life of the characters from the action going on, instead of feeling kind of lost in the choices being made because none of them really feel right.

[Kristi · Rating 2 out of 5]

I have a love / hate relationship with this book. The writing was beautiful and insightful at times. My problem was that I could not bond with the characters. First we have Evan, a murdering son who deserts his family, is physically violent with his son, and demeans his wife. I would not want him to be my therapist. Rachael could have been a favorite character, but her identity is too compliant and confused. She has an affair, but cannot even overcome her ambivalence in this relationship. Neither parent puts the well-being of their sons first. Paddy is portrayed as the Midwestern hick - he seems more like a friendly dog than a man. He too deserts his wife and daughter and wonders why she overdoses as a teen. One of the most honest and likable characters is Evan's drug addicted brother. He at least knows who he is. The book drags for the first two thirds then improves when everything falls apart. There were some paragraphs that were exquisite, but I cannot recommend the book. Kristi & Abby Tabby

[Tonya · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was one that I truly chose by the cover, I found it intriguing. Not a bad book! Two men meet by chance when their fathers both die the same night in the same hospital, they are drawn together by the circumstance, even though they are vastly different from each other. They are constantly drawn to each other and the others life, thinking perhaps the other is the one getting it all right. Eventually an affair blossoms between the couple's and the Book shows the drowning fault lines in each life.

[Nikki Morse · Rating 4 out of 5]

I REALLY liked this book. I read my first short story collection of hers 10 years ago and loved it (Female Troubles) but this is the first novel I've loved this much. Such a delight to return to a favorite author after years.

[Katy Lovejoy · Rating 1 out of 5]

Bad. And icky

[Sophie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Too much sex. Very well-written. Selfish characters.

"Everything they were and knew and had created between them existed here, a great voluminous invention, entirely invisible, inexplicable, exclusively theirs."

"Fish did not move him; they seemed an embodiment of meaninglessness, caught in their small tanks, circling as they waited for food -- affectless metaphors in a godless universe."

"The last thing he'd had consciousness of was the word bound. Two of its meanings, he'd realized, were opposite: to progress and to be restrained."

"But though his clients' troubles resembled his own, he did not consider himself among them, he was not of them, the messed-up humans."

"To recover, which seems to mean two opposite things -- to find, and also to cover again."

"Not every problem is ground in infidelity," he told her with disgust. "Not everything has to do with you."

"A pall fell, Rachel thought, dreamily imagining the conversation she might have later with her ironic friend Zoe."

"He'd sat down delicately across the table from her, as if either he or the chair were newly fragile, and removed his glasses, which had the effect of making him seem vulnerable and frank, when in fact it allowed him to lost a clear focus on the person to whom he was speaking. In other words, it was cowardly, not forthright, for him to take off his glasses."

"The first drink relaxed her, made her glowing and somehow optimistic, happily miserable, gung-ho for her glumness."

"She thought, with genuine amazement, that she had felt too much needed then, as if she were the heart of the house, the busy organ that kept it alive, and of how she had often fled to the bathtub, locker her family on the other side of the door, submerging herself in oily steaming water until all she heard was the faraway clang of the apartment building's plumbing and her own selfish heartbeat. You, you, you, it said."

"She felt like a has-been beauty from a 1940s movie, tossed and wry."

"There was a twinkling curiosity idling somewhere in her lonesomeness, a bright lure spinning through cloudy water."

"If he had been standing with the clear blue sky behind him, it might look as if he had two holes in his head."

"One of Rachel's most debilitating fears was that people would discover how little prepared she was to understand the world: scientifically, politically, organically."

"The green heat of summer mornings."

"They dissolved like important but forgotten dreams, like notes written wronghandedly, illegible and misremembered in daylight."

"She rolled against him hard, like a log on a river of logs"

"Today was racquetball day, but there would be not racquetball."

"Against her wishes, she imagines Paddy, and a renegade thrill loops in her torso, an electric eel in the bathtub of her quiet home."

"Goodnight, babe," he said, simply, unfailingly, night after night, mild as milk."

[Deidre · Rating 2 out of 5]

Antonya Nelson. Talking in Bed. New York: Simon and Shuster, 1998.

I swear I read parts of this book in a collection of her short stories. Talking in Bed is a 275 page novel - it would be better as a short story.

Pages 178 / 179 I can relate to this description.

“One of [the:] most debilitating fears was that people would discover how little prepared she was to understand the world . . . She listened to the news on public radio every day, but her attention to it was purely temporary . . . Whatever she learned, she seemed to forget: names of painters, philosophies of great thinkers, the temperature at which water boiled, the exchange rate of the British pound, the different types of clouds, the depth of the ocean, the size of the sun, the arrangements of the universe.”

[Sally Kenney · Rating 4 out of 5]

My favorite of the three so far. Character reminded me a lot of the guy in In Treatment. Still find these women passive and adrift. Came to like the main male narrator for mid-life crisis. Wonderful account of the excruciating aspect of the dinner party.

[Jessica · Rating 2 out of 5]

Sometimes I enjoyed the writing, but more often I found myself annoyed by the constantly switching points-of-view and overwrought style. I was also very disappointed in the traditional and clichéd way that the story was resolved.

[Kris · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good writing in parts, but didn't like as much as other novers she's written. I just could not warm up to the main character, Ev, the psychologist. I liked the lump Paddy a lot. Rachel was someone I could empathize with as well, especially since she had to put up with Ev.

[Loreen Niewenhuis · Rating 1 out of 5]

I couldn't finish this one. I like her short fiction, but this novel DRAGGGGGGGGGGGGGGEDDDD! There are too many books out there to spend time on a bad one.

[Donna]

I'm a fan of Nelson's and loved getting to know the characters in this book.

[Joanna Eleftheriou · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read the whole novel in a day! First time since adolescence. I think that says it all.

[John · Rating 2 out of 5]

Some poor construction and overwrought emotional passages. Probably more like 2.5.

[Stephanie · Rating 2 out of 5]

Eh. Didn't really enjoy it.

[Dawn · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very fast read. Great author, really made you hate and love different characters. And by the way why couldn't Rachel and Paddy stay together???

[Susan Wolffe · Rating 1 out of 5]

Got it off the free table at work. Two couples. Wife of one and husband of the other have an affair. Main protagonist couple later reconcile.