Listen to the Marriage

July 15, 2018
Nine months in marriage counseling with a 30-something California couple."This isn't a marriage where someone is beating the other one up. Or where someone is gambling away everything the family owns, or someone can't hold a job because they're drunk or high. As a matter of fact, this is a marriage that, in material terms, has been very successful." Nonetheless, Steve, a boyishly handsome, successful partner at a private equity firm, has been cheating on Gretchen, "a beautiful, smart ice princess" and a tenured English professor. By the time the two arrive in therapy with a counselor named Sandy, Gretchen has already begun her own affair, rented an apartment, taken the kids and moved out. In dialogue-heavy chapters set entirely in Sandy's office, narrated from her therapeutic point of view, their troubles and habitual communication problems are revealed, diagnosed, and discussed at length. "I want you to try an exercise," Sandy tells Steve. "When Gretchen says something, I want you to imagine she means the opposite of what she is saying." While Gretchen perceives Sandy as siding with Steve, who really just wants to be forgiven and get back together, Sandy explains that she sides with the marriage, as personified by an empty green chair that doesn't match anything else in the office. "I keep that chair in the office to remind me that I speak for the marriage," Sandy tells Gretchen. "Sandy, you are sounding delusional," Gretchen replies. "You're going to tell me what my nonexistent marriage is saying from a chair it isn't in?" Will Sandy's methods work? Will Steve and Gretchen give up their extramarital liaisons and reconnect with their love? What is that chair really saying?Osborn's (The Paper Chase, 2004, etc.) fly-on-the-wall approach offers a certain voyeuristic pleasure but seems primarily designed for didactic effect.

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August 27, 2018
In this uneven novel by Osborn (The Paper Chase), Sandy is a marriage counselor tasked with helping Steve and Gretchen through their recent separation. Told entirely through Sandy’s point of view, readers witness the disintegration of Gretchen and Steve’s relationship as it is told to Sandy during their therapy sessions. Readers learn of both their extramarital affairs, and of the deeper dissatisfaction that has prompted them to be unfaithful. Though the novel’s start implies that divorce may be inevitable, as the narrative unfolds, readers are instead given a nuanced portrait of what makes a marriage work. Marriage, Osborn seems to say, is uneventful, and to keep it going is even more uneventful—mostly, it takes dedication, self-reflection, and lots and lots of communication. It is an admirable message, but therein lie both the advantages and the limits of the novel’s conceit—readers are told of the trials, tribulations, and hard-won victories of Steve and Gretchen’s marriage, but are not allowed to actually see and experience them. Sandy is a profound but limited narrator, and her own back story and issues are not nearly so interesting as Steve and Gretchen’s. At its best, this an emotionally intelligent and deeply felt consideration of the realities of marriage. But it is not consistently at its best.

November 1, 2018
Osborn, who wrote his well-known first novel, The Paper Chase (1971), when he was in law school, now fictionalizes his transformative experiences with Sandy, a compellingly unusual marriage counselor, in a novel set entirely in her office. Each short chapter works like scenes from a play, capturing the successive meetings of Steve, partner in a private-equity firm, and Gretchen, a tenured professor, who have recently separated owing to Steve's infidelities, as they try to rebuild their relationship. Sandy is a phenomenal creation; she is confrontational and honest and guides the narrative in unexpected directions. Indeed, her stark, radical interventions create an interesting plot structure as the counselor acts almost like the author of her clients' lives and, even, of the book. Osborn builds a rich picture of Gretchen and Steve's existences outside of Sandy's office, with a few fascinating crumbs offered of Sandy's life, too. In some ways, Osborn has written a self-help novel that anyone in a relationship can learn from, one which manages to be both instructional and a wonderfully gripping drama.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)

September 1, 2018

Two smart, successful people--who once cared for each other very much--face off angrily in the office of a gifted, no-nonsense counselor as they try to save their marriage. Otherwise, things are good. Steve has become a partner at his law firm, wife Gretchen is an English professor at the University of San Francisco, and they have two healthy children. But they've lost their way as a couple, and each has sought comfort in the arms of a lover. So begins this excellent new novel about long-term romantic relationships from Osborn, the acclaimed author of 1971's The Paper Chase, along with other novels and screenplays. Readers with relationship experience will find here the realistic issues of compromise, sacrifice, communication and also much that is new in terms of how to nurture a relationship (mostly having to do with learning--or relearning--how to listen to one's partner with an open heart). VERDICT Deeply engaging and insightful, this book is enthusiastically recommended for anyone who has ever been (or wishes to be) married. [See Prepub Alert, 4/30/18.]--Patrick Sullivan, Manchester Community Coll., CT

Copyright 2018 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

September 1, 2018

Best known for The Paper Chase, featuring a Harvard Law student and his imperious professor, Osborn here presents another feuding twosome: Gretchen and Steve, long married, recently separated, with two children and high-stress jobs, attending counseling sessions detailed here. A Macmillan Reading Group Selection.

Copyright 2018 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.