Irving is not for the faint of heart. I have more of his novels than any other fiction writer, but you really have to be in the right frame of mind. Having just finished this, it seems that it was kind of a trial run for The World According to Garp, which would be published four years later and make the author into a star. This particular novel centers on a polyamorous relationship between two couples, reflected in Garp, with both differences and similarities. Here, the novel is first-person, whereas Garp is third-person. The main character of Garp is a wannabe highbrow-novelist, and the narrator of Marriage is a wannabe historical novelist. Incidentally, one of the most annoying traits of never-named narrator is his statement, “We historical novelists do/think/say/know ___.” He really is a pretentious bastard, yet in a perverse way that’s part of his charm.

Having resd approximately half of Irving’s output, I am struck how several of his novels seem to pair with each other. This one pairs with Garp, A Prayer for Owen Meany with A Son of the Circus. I’m sure there are others.

One of the strangest things is that Irving disclaims being a religious novelist, yet religion is often lurking at the back of his stories, sometimes like in Owen Meany and Circus bursting up the the foreground. Yet for all that, perhaps because of all that, Irving is not for the faint of heart. ( )

Vienna, Klimt, Schiele and plenty of sex scenes. What's not to like? ( )

I found this book in a give-away pile, and thought it would be interesting to read a description of consensual non-monogamy from back in the 1970s. I didn't have much to go on except for the blurb, I'd never heard of the book or John Irving before I stumbled across it.

It is the story of two couples - the narrator, who is a writer (the story is told in the first person) and his wife Utch, and Edith and Severin, the couple they enter into a relationship with. You see the narrator's character through the shapes of what he says about the others, but they are all strongly and colourfully drawn - loyal plain peasant Utch, shaped by the traumas of her childhood, tall sophisticated Edith, and most of all Severin - Severin the wrestler, the German professor, the proud, the angry, the cruel, the vulnerable...

It is in many ways a book about what you don't see when you are wrapped up in yourself. The narrator falls for Edith, who is beautiful and a writer, feels they have a very intense connection, and in many ways sorts out Utch and Severin's relationship 'to keep things balanced'. You can really feel the jealousy of Severin as he tries to control things with rules and timetables. Yet as the book goes on, everyone's motives become more ambiguous. Maybe it is Utch who is most truly in love? And maybe Edith doesn't care at all for the narrator, but is just extracting revenge on Severin?

It does do a great job of portraying the way people are in relationships - the slights, the overreacting, the asymmetries, the small jealousies. There's a lot of sex, but it's quite workmanlike in the writing style, even when it's describing threesomes or sex in the shower.

The role of the children in the book is interesting. Beautiful, valuable, but mostly ghost characters around the fringes, although part of the point of the book is to show how wrapped up the adults are in each other that it endangers the children.

Is it a book that is pro consensual non monomgamy? I guess not really - they have some good times, but for some toxic reasons, and then it all falls apart and it all ends in tears. The campsite rule is definitely not being followed here. But it was an interesting read, and well observed, and I think gets some of the dynamics of how group relationships can be tense and difficult very well ( )

It builds and builds and goes nowhere. I was interested in the backgrounds of the four main characters but then, nothing. Perhaps I missed the point. If the point of this was this has the seed of its own destruction, I guess I hoped for more. In some sense this is very dated in the era of free love and even the cold war. Two couples are deeply into what we used to call wife swapping, today it might be called spouse swapping. Very erotic, very consuming, very hedonistic, very empty. And yes, lots of wrestling and because this is John Irving, some maimed or missing body parts. Perhaps this would have worked better as a short story. The saving grace here, it's not a tome. ( )

Zwei Paare beschließen, es einmal mit Partnertausch zu versuchen. Ein mittelgewichtiger Versuch, mit dem schwergewichtigen Problem der Ehe fertigzuwerden und wieder gefährlich zu leben. Anfangs scheint auch alles zu klappen, doch dann entpuppt sich einer der Vier als Spielverderber, die Vierecksgeschichte entwickelt sich zunehmend zu einem Kampf hinter verschlossenen Türen, mit schmerzlichen Folgen ...