When a Man Marries

Originally published in 1910.
The story is as much fun as an old 1930's movie farce or a Chevy Chase movie. The humor is only partly from the snarks and wiseassery, but situational as well. Pretty much along the lines of "if anything can go wrong--it will".
Take a group of friends of the privileged class with good intentions (but no one with brains except the main protagonist) in a big old house in NYC. Add in a cantankerous aunt and a visiting civil engineer, a hastily concocted scheme crafted of good intentions, enforced medical quarantine and no servants, paparazzi, missing jewels, and you have the basic elements. Well worth the read!!
Karen Commins gives a fantastic audio performance as narrator! She has all of the audio emotions down show more perfectly, and it's easy to know which *character* is verbalizing.
"This audiobook was provided by the author, narrator, or publisher at no cost in exchange for an unbiased review courtesy of Audiobook Blast." show less

When a man marries is a high-speed comedy which does not keep all that well together. Jim, a painter - good for nothing, married Bella but was left by her before the year was out. He lives off his aunt Selina's allowance (doubled since he married Bella), and fear that his aunt might slash the allowance if she finds out about the divorce, he pulls off a comedy of manners to fool his aunt, presenting his best friend Kit in the role of Bella, whom the aunt has never seen.

A comedy of that sort would not be difficult to keep up for the duration of an evening's dinner party, but as the Japanese butler is suspected of having smallpox, all members of the party are quarantined within the house for a whole week. The servants having run off, the show more dinner guests find themselves quite literally helpless, and unable to cook or even boil an egg.

The novel is a bit of a stage comedy with characters running in and out of rooms, hiding in closets, etc. Partially hilarious, involving some stark racism, the novel is reminiscent of P. G. Wodehouse.

Principally known as an author of detective and mystery novels, Mary Roberts Rinehart does include some elements from that genre into When a man marries, such as a string of pearls that goes missing, but the novel is mainly a comedy of manners. show less

Entertaining mystery-comedy-romance. The plot was a bit contrived but it held my interest to the end.

I enjoyed Roberts' "Tish" stories when young and this seems to be much the same brand of humor, taking ordinary life and turning it to bizarre comic moments