A Happy Marriage

A Happy Marriage: A Novel by Rafael Yglesias


My rating: 5 of 5 stars
This book touched my heart. It's not technically a memoir but I put it on the memoir bookshelf because the author has been open in all of his interviews in noting that it is autobiographical and based on him and his late wife's relationship. I also read Joan Didion's ‘Year of Magical Thinking,’ which was a beautiful elegy for her husband, but I don’t think you can compare ‘A Happy Marriage’ with that book. Somehow I feel like I really came to know the author and his wife over the course of the novel. They both deal perfectly with describing the loss of a beloved spouse.

This book somehow touched me even more by describing when the couple first met and their first time. It alternated chapters from when they first met to the last days of the wife’s life. I really can’t do a sufficient job describing the book because it is so beautifully written but I highly recommend it.

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Entertainment Weekly gave it an A- in this review.
Here is the NY Times review.