Uncommon Arrangements: Seven Marriages

In Uncommon Arrangements: Seven Marriages noted cultural critic Katie Roiphe examines seven marriages between 1910 and World War II. She uses private memoirs, personal correspondence, and long-forgotten journals as source materials for this attempt to re-create the lives of these fascinating couples. Among those examined are H.G. & Jane Wells, Katherine Mansfield & John Middleton Murry, and Vanessa & Clive Bell. How did Roiphe choose her subjects? As she writes in the introduction, "The couples I have chosen were more than usually involved in questions of freedom and attraction. Their relationships were depraved or innovative, depending on one's point of view, and they tried to solve the problem of intimate relations in more or less creative ways." Why the period between the two wars? In part, she writes, "because it was as richly conflicted as our own. The lives of the writers and artists emerging from the Edwardian period bridged an enormous gap in attitude: their earliest education was infused with the exquisite restraint of the Victorians, and they came of age amidst the seductive freedoms and sexual frankness promised by the new century."

The book has received great praise from the likes of Publishers Weekly, The New York Times Book Review, and Slate. In reading through Uncommon Arrangements, it's clear to me that Roiphe is also interested in telling stories. There's much here that from a plot or narrative perspective fascinates, in addition to Roiphe's observations about the couples and the times in which they lived. Highly recommended.