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"Marriage doesn't just break down," observes Taylor, a distinguished ex-Esquire writer. "We disconnect the life support." To list the Taylors' problems scarcely does justice to his thoughtful account of their doomed 11-year marriage: age difference (he was 26; she, 32), her Parkinson's disease, her alienation after forsaking a writing career for motherhood, his adultery, his panicky consideration of "the Belize option" (if you flee with your assets to dodge alimony, Belize won't extradite).
Mr. and Mrs. Taylor's lovers are vividly sketched. Alex, the most rounded extramarital character, survived a Marseilles orgy ending in a death by coke overdose and became a successful businesswoman bent on marrying Taylor, but wound up with only one steady relationship--with her therapist. The author gets the fullest portrait here. A childhood bouncing around the world from Accra, Ghana, to Yokosuka, Japan, may have predisposed him to domestic change, and his big-headed, big-town milieu was rife with divorce (the wife of Taylor's dad's close friend phoned from a billionaire's jet to say she was taking off with the billionaire--who had been their best man). Taylor skillfully interweaves others' sad tales with his own and with historical evidence from the classic Family, Sex, and Marriage in England 1500-1800. He doesn't solve the quintessential questions, but sheds both warmth and light on the whole emotional roller coaster. And the romantic tunes his wife introduced him to (Songs of the Auvergne and Tous les matins du monde) won't ever stop plucking his heartstrings. --Tim Appelo
From Publishers Weekly
Taylor (Storming the Magic Kingdom) has written an eloquent and deeply felt memoir about the demise of his 11-year marriage. Taylor married his wife when he was 26 and she was 32, after they had been living together for more than a year. Almost immediately their marriage underwent a severe strain when his wife was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease, which made her subsequent pregnancy fraught with anxiety for both of them. Although Taylor was delighted by the birth of his daughter, the years following were marked by a slow but progressive breakdown in communication between husband and wife. Taylor felt that his wife became resentful at her dependency on him, and, as their estrangement grew, he coped by having an affair and later moving out. The couple made several attempts to salvage the marriage for the sake of their daughter, and Taylor sensitively conveys his grief over the failure of these efforts. Clearly, neither Taylor nor his wife embarked on the path of divorce lightly, and Taylor manages to convey the sense of loss he will always feel without sounding sorry for himself. While this is an overwhelmingly personal book, Taylor does take a few well-aimed shots at family-values pundits who decry the "divorce culture" and view divorce as a failure of moral will. "While it requires will to make a marriage work," Taylor writes, "it also requires a horrifying act of will to bring one to an end." Author tour. Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
Two young men, two different marriages, and two separate divorces, but two similar autobiographical formulas. Both authors use excruciating detail to outline the stories of their relationships. Both closely examine the marriage track records of their immediate and extended families, questioning why parents and grandparents were able to remain married until death parted them. Weddings, family celebrations, first loves, and previous lovers are examined. Neither author, however, is able to provide a reason for his divorce or the climbing divorce rate in general. Taylor, a former correspondent for Esquire and New York magazine, outlines his marriage, the birth of his daughter, and an affair that becomes as "burdensome as the marriage." He examines his solitude when living alone and his lonesome need to spend time with his daughter. Though he escapes any punishment for his adultery, he lives with the ache of regret for his lost family life. Roche, who teaches writing at the University of Central Arkansas, examines the nontraditional relationship of an unusual couple. The tale opens with Roche taking his second wife to meet Julie, his first wife. It is the story of his first marriage that he tells. Their relationship begins on the day Julie kicks him in karate class. They later marry and join the Peace Corps in Antigua. Later, Julie enrolls in graduate school, and the two live separately. Dan decides to hyphenate his last name, as Julie has, and this issue becomes the subliminal focus of the couple's story and their attempts to stay united despite the obvious fact that they are growing apart. Both Roche and Taylor are seeking closure. Roche has a better story to tell, but neither book is a required purchase for public libraries. Academic libraries needing materials to support curricula may consider purchase of both.?Joyce Sparrow, St. Petersburg P.L., FLCopyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Kirkus Reviews
A polished nonfiction writer exercises his powers of observation and his writer's craft to reflect on his own marriage's collapse. The title Taylor, formerly a contributor to Esquire and New York magazines (Circus of Ambition: The Culture of Power and Wealth in the Eighties, 1989), has selected for this memoir reveals his self-consciously honest and positive approach to the subject of his marriage's demise as part of a larger whole. Aside from the effortless precision of his prose and his male perspective, its Taylor's tone that distinguishes his story. Sadness, not bitterness, fills the book. As he describes the slow breakdown of his 11-year marriage (``a mechanism so encrusted with small disappointments and petty grudges that its parts no longer closed'') and surveys the consequences of separation, Taylor feels a deep sense of lossboth for his family and for the part of himself that was defined by his family. In a series of 32 brief chapters, Taylor entertainingly (albeit selectively) familiarizes us with the individuals and circumstances that contributed to his marital situations: himself and his own family, his wife and her background, their meeting, falling into marriage, and falling ``through the darkness'' out of it. In between we meet the cherished daughter, Taylor's demanding or silly lovers, assorted divorcing friends and neighbors, marriage counselors, and finally, the marriage mediator and financial advisor who guided Taylor and his wife toward separation. Linking the assorted scenes and personalities is Taylor's narrative, driven by a formidable ego (as a journalist, he lost a job due to his ``attitude'') and by his search for ``moral clarification.'' Falling represents, in literary form, Taylor's attempt to achieve such clarity and to come to terms with his own dishonesty and responsibility in the marriage's failure. Taylor's writing has style, but this book will most interest thosebe they single, married, or divorcedwith a curiosity about the most intimate details of someone else's marriage. (Author tour) -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
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