Andrew Sean Greer, The Story of a Marriage (2008)

Everything about this book was a surprise to me.  I read a review somewhere, and I expected the novel to be about the intricacies of marriage—the joys, the pitfalls, the knowns and the unknowns.  The novel was about all these things—and more and less.  It was about the way war reshapes lives in insidious ways—the lives of those who fight and those who don’t, the lives of women as well as men.  It was about the Cold War and the terrible paranoia that it created.  It’s about fear—of failure, of shame, of exposure, of the unknown future.  And it’s about people.  And lives that turn out in ways we never imagined.

The ending will surprise you, and the whole book will make you think about how big national events—like World War II, the Cold War, and McCarthyism—can reshape all our lives. 

To read  more about the historical topics covered in the book, see

On draft resistance during World War II:

http://uncpress.unc.edu/browse/page/337

On the U.S. Government’s experiments with Conscientious Objectors:

http://www.friendsjournal.org/u-s-conscientious-objectors-world-war-ii

http://afsc.org/story/they-served-without-weapons-guinea-pig-experiments

http://americanradioworks.publicradio.org/features/wwii/a1.html

Todd Tucker’s book, The Great Starvation Experiment:  http://www.amazon.com/Great-Starvation-Experiment-Starved-Millions/dp/0743270304

On homosexuality in the Cold War:

http://www.amazon.com/Homosexuality-Cold-War-America-Americanists/dp/0822319640

http://www.press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/L/bo3614333.html

http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/404811in.html

About the author of the novel:

http://therumpus.net/2009/02/the-rumpus-interview-with-andrew-sean-greer/

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/23/books/23wals.html

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-pEvyasK91k