The Marriage Diaries
A Novel
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- $7.99
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- $7.99
Publisher Description
“Brutally honest and wonderfully witty, The Marriage Diaries had me laughing and crying–often at the same time.”
–Gemma Townley, author of Little White Lies
Meet Sean and Celeste–living proof that opposites attract.
Savvy and sophisticated Celeste is a top clothing buyer in London; Sean is a scruffy, eccentric writer turned stay-at-home dad who, courtesy of the couple’s toddler, has mastered the art of changing stinky diapers. Needing to be seen (if only by himself) as more than just a drool-spattered Mr. Mom, Sean begins a hilarious journal detailing the ridiculous, wondrous, and sometimes salacious aspects of being a househusband–including such juicy tidbits as his growing attraction to the beautiful Uma Thursday, a single mother from his son’s play group.
But when Celeste stumbles upon Sean’s secret entries, she’s dismayed to discover she’s opened a Pandora’s box on her marriage. Hardly the kind of girl to take a straying husband lying down, she devises a scheme of her own, and the twin strands of the will-they-won’t-they plot become ever more entangled. Can love trump lust? Can fidelity conquer passion? Or will the destructive forces of untrammeled desire wreck what may just be, for all its faults, the perfect marriage?
With sparkling wit and characters who leap off the page, Rebecca Campbell has crafted a brilliant and utterly winning novel about vows, straying, and finding a way home.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Campbell (Slave to Fashion; Slave to Love) blends strained fidelity, the perils of parenting and a heaping dose of bodily-function jokes with a scathing British wit in her third romp. Fashionista Celeste and her writer husband, Sean, have a reliable if staid life: "two and a bit"-year-old child Henry and enough money to live comfortably in one of the world's most expensive cities. But when Celeste reads Sean's journal and learns that he's becoming friendly with "yummy mummy" Uma Thursday from Henry's playgroup, the cradle gets rocked. In chapters that alternate between Sean's journal entries and Celeste's quest for revenge, Uma turns up the heat on Sean and Celeste has her seven-year-itch scratched. Campbell's insights into the tedium of settled relationships are spot-on: "Is this the way a marriage ends, like the bathwater going slowly cold? Or does something dramatic have to happen, a big bang, some shock and awe, a 9/11?" Its stylish prose and gravity of plot make this weightier than a beach read, though the characters' psychology has its phoned-in moments. By using characters from her previous novels and leaving several loose ends untied, Campbell has crafted a steamy springboard to what could be a fiery sequel. (On sale Sept. 26)
