Sally Ryder Brady

This searing memoir of a marriage soaked with both darkness and love is well worth reading. There will inevitably be comparisons of A Box of Darkness to The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion, but I just think this book is even more breathtaking. Sally Ryder Brady is completely honest. Her frankness shines a flashlight on her lengthy marriage in a way that just lets you feel every ounce of her pain, confusion, and deep abiding love for her husband. That she does this in a literary and beautifully written way is just icing on the cake.

Some will say that neither the author nor her husband is especially likable, but I think that in reality, she just doesn't hold herself high on a pedestal, but rather shows her humanity and her flaws and how those contribute to the challenges of her marriage to a man who may be gay and who most certainly is an alcoholic.

Through all their traumas and challenges, the love in the marriage shines through and really shows how people can still love one another in the face of the most unlovable behaviors.For me, this book was very, very real - - and I felt that made it exceptional. Loved it! Made my favorites list for 2010.
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It's interesting how many memoirs these days include finding out that husbands are gay or are having sex with men. In this one, wife Sally marries devout Catholic Upton Brady and has four children with him. He's an intense charmer, a publishing house executive and alcoholic, a great dancer who can whip up a cape on a sewing machine. He's also a mystery from the beginning of the book through his death at the end. As much of a challenge to me is understanding what and how Sally loved about Upton, who was often so cruel and so difficult to live with - yes, he was such a bright light that he probably made all else appear dim beside him, but what a beastly partner.

Still, this held my attention all the way through. Just for once, however, I'd like to read a true story written by a husband whose wife became, or was, a lesbian.… (more)

This is the story of a marriage told in alternating shifts in time from the present to the beginning. Sally Brady's husband, Upton, died unexpectedly and she learned things about him she never knew, primarily that she thought he might have been a homosexual. Their marriage suffered when he got drunk but had really wonderful moments as well. Sally knew that he had sex with a man during their marriage and I guess she assumed it was a one time thing. This seems to be a very honest portrait of a marriage in that Brady exposes her insecurities. She is bothered intensely by the idea that Upton had a secret self although we never know how much his perceived attraction to men entered into his life. I also wonder how such an honest portrait affects her grown children. This book bothered me in that the portrait of the marriage is only from her perspective and yet it can color memories of a man who is no longer around to possibly add to the full picture.… (more)