A SPATE of irrevocable events occurred during the summer of 1953 that generated a domino effect of change in the social, cultural and historical landscape of America: alleged Soviet spies Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were executed; a ceasefire agreemen
t was reached in the Korean war; and the first stirrings of desegregation were taking place in public schools in the South. In his fourth book, The Story Of A Marriage, Andrew Sean Greer offers a microcosm of these changing times, in all their complexity and richness, through the life and marriage of Pearlie Cook.
From the beginning of this inspired novel, the reader is pulled along by the voice of Pearlie, a young black woman who travels west to San Francisco in search of a better life. Not long after her arrival, she encounters her high school sweetheart, Holland Cook.
A wedding and the birth of a son follow, and Pearlie goes about the business of becoming a good wife. A part of this business includes the protection of Holland's weak heart, an elusive ailment that she learns about from his jabbering twin cousins.
Her system involves snipping up the daily newspaper to remove unsettling news, choosing a pet dog with no bark and retiring into separate bedrooms so as not to disrupt his "delicate" sleep patterns.
This carefully constructed silence is shattered by the arrival of Buzz Drumer, a striking white businessman who becomes a regular visitor to the Cook home. The reader soon learns that the two men had once been assigned to the same military hospital room.
One day, Buzz tells Pearlie the truth about the relationship: the two men were lovers for more than two years as they tried to acclimatise to the post-war world.
During the coming months Buzz and Pearlie clandestinely meet for conversations as they negotiate the uncertain outcome of their precarious love triangle.
Greer seamlessly choreographs an intricate narrative that speaks authentically to the longings and desires of his characters. Late in the novel Pearlie says: "This is a war story. It was not meant to be. It started as a love story, the story of a marriage, but the war has stuck to it everywhere like shattered glass."
Greer collects these bits of glass, and creates a tender kaleidoscope of both our history and Pearlie's heart. "I do not know what joins the parts of an atom," she observes, "but it seems what binds one human to another is pain."
The full article contains 428 words and appears in Scotland On Sunday newspaper.
