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Reading The Dangerous Husband is like waking up to earthquake weather: Jane Shapiro's second novel exists in an atmosphere where something shattering is always about to happen. Its context is deceptive--New York in the '90s, a world of artists and writers (the narrator is a photographer), elegant dinner parties at chic apartments. But beneath the surface of this polished world there is trouble. Things are not quite right. For a start, the narrator's new husband, Dennis, cannot move two steps without tripping over himself. At one point he falls through a glass tabletop and almost maims his penis. He keeps an albino frog in a bucket in the basement. The frog floats there, colorless, a sign--but of what?
Shapiro is that rare breed: a truly funny writer who is also emotional and lyrical and deeply sad. Like Joy Williams, she seamlessly evokes a dark and unmistakable world. In The Dangerous Husband the narrator always feels like she is bluffing, playing the part of the wife, watching herself act the way a woman in love acts, wishing she could stop watching herself, wishing she could escape her acute and menacing self-consciousness. Shapiro describes loneliness in prose so precise it's breathtaking:
In loneliness, as we know, anyone who cares for you can become the object of a kind of vagrant love: dry cleaner, hair cutter, naturally any masseuse if you visit one; occasionally the doctor, always the nurse. If any of these evinces a bad attitude you can be crushed like a pip. Otherwise, depths of gratitude. The guy who fixes the frame of your eyeglasses (which you will have broken yourself, when you're lonely, by some method like forgetting they're in bed with you and fitfully rolling back and forth and crushing them in the night), this wonderful simple calm optician, holding up your own glasses in delicate fingers.As the story progresses, the narrator begins to fear her husband more and more, and fear isolates her further. While at times the plot edges into the implausible, Shapiro never lets it stay suspended there for long. Even when you can't believe her story, you trust her. By the book's end, I knew I would follow her anywhere. --Emily White
From Publishers Weekly
Veering skillfully between hilarity, suspense and surreal pathos, Shapiro's eagerly awaited second novel (after the highly praised Moondog, 1992) again demonstrates her witty take on the battle of the sexes. The narrator, whose wry and sophisticated voice is an ear-perfect blend of wisecracks, aper?us and mounting frenzy, describes the dizzy rapture of falling in love, at 40, with a wealthy ex-sociology professor and would-be novelist, and their whirlwind marriage. She soon discovers that her new husband, Dennis, is a major klutz, constantly tripping, falling, spilling, colliding, bumping and lurchingAand breaking objects and bones. His total misperception of spatial relationships begins to assume dangerous dimensions after he variously crushes his now-alarmed wife's toe with a hot skillet, wrenches her neck, drops her on a tile floor, breaks her arm by hugging her, gives her a concussion in circumstances she cannot describe, raises a giant hematoma by trodding on her leg and in general leaves her black and blueAand scared to death. Dennis's maladroitness always has a hilarious edge: on the verge of sex, he perches on a glass coffee table that predictably shatters: "Daggers flew up and he landed in shards." In fact, Dennis is more than a little strange; he never tells his bride that he's been married several times before, or discusses what became of his former wives. He keeps an albino frog in a bucket in the basement, lavishes affection on a hyper dog who pees on the rug, and has driven his neurotic cat into permanent hiding. "This was the kind of person my husband was: strange, loving, lethal," the narrator muses, gradually realizing that to prevent her own accidental mutilated demise, Dennis "really needed to be dead." When she engages a suave and sexy hit man (he's also a novelist) to do the deed, the narrative moves into beautifully controlled farce. The reader springs through this book in a state of giddy anticipation and nervous laughter. Even the narrator's occupation adds an edge to the clever premiseAshe is a photographer obsessed with capturing reality, but trapped in a surreal situation. Shapiro takes risks here, but she acquits herself triumphantly. Author tour.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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Einleitungssatz
We were introduced at one of those theatrical, poignant Manhattan Thanksgivings, a splendid party (singular guests, including small precocious chess-playing children and a cousin of Jim Jarmusch's; cornucopia of gourds wildflowers pouring down the center of the trestle table; old family silver bought at a yard sale in Maine) in the clever, threadbare Horatio Street home of our shared acquaintance Lydia, a magazine editor who bravely orchestrates holiday feasts for the friends who have become her family and always takes in strays: This guy and I were the strays. Lesen Sie die erste Seite
Buchdeckel | Copyright | Auszug | Rückseite
We were introduced at one of those theatrical, poignant Manhattan Thanksgivings, a splendid party (singular guests, including small precocious chess-playing children and a cousin of Jim Jarmusch's; cornucopia of gourds wildflowers pouring down the center of the trestle table; old family silver bought at a yard sale in Maine) in the clever, threadbare Horatio Street home of our shared acquaintance Lydia, a magazine editor who bravely orchestrates holiday feasts for the friends who have become her family and always takes in strays: This guy and I were the strays. Lesen Sie die erste Seite
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4.0 von 5 Sternen
Dark, ambiguity-filled look at marriage,
Von Ein Kunde
Rezension bezieht sich auf: The Dangerous Husband: A Novel (Gebundene Ausgabe)
The protagonist's marriage starts out with the delicious, isn't-love-wonderful and didn't-we-invent-it? sensation so many of us will recognize from those early, giddiest moments of a new relationship. With stunning quickness and ferocity, the marriage begins a downward spiral that makes the unthinkable -- murder -- seem like a plausible way out. All these terrible things that happen: are they truly accidents, or are they intentional acts that look accidental? You begin to see how women who are highly educated and accomplished can feel hopeless and trapped in an abusive or bad relationship, and how "truth" can be so hard to discern in that setting. A dark, ambiguity-filled look at marriage and human behavior, leavened with enough wit and humor to keep you from dropping the book in despair.
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5.0 von 5 Sternen
How to get out of a marriage,
Rezension bezieht sich auf: The Dangerous Husband: A Novel (Gebundene Ausgabe)
Love at first sight. The narrator (age 40) and Dennis (age 40). Wild days on the beach in Jamaica. Marriage. But it quietly becomes evident that Dennis is accident prone. Forever falling down, running into walls, spilling his coffee, dropping his food. By now the wife is included. A smashed and broken toe. A broken arm. Bruises all over. Friends stand at a distance and then disappear. Two pets are killed and a car demolished. The wife not only is disgusted, but becomes afraid of her life.What is she to do? Get rid of him! Hire a killer. Investigate poison. Buy a large hunting knife. This book is not only extremely well written, but also full of imagination and with endless humor. A book one can truly enjoy. Helfen Sie anderen Kunden bei der Suche nach den hilfreichsten Rezensionen
2.0 von 5 Sternen
Well-written but not particularly enjoyable,
Von UCLAgirl "UCLAgirl" (California) - Alle meine Rezensionen ansehen
Rezension bezieht sich auf: The Dangerous Husband: A Novel (Gebundene Ausgabe)
At first, I thought about giving up on the book. The relationship between the characters--particularly their sex life--seemed nothing but unpleasant. Toward the end, however, it became both funny and menacing, which I assume was the author's intent all along. This mood should have emerged earlier, however, to make some of the protagonist's decisions plausible. The degree of their isolation was difficult to believe, as well. Couldn't she just have gotten a job and made friends through it? That's what the rest of the world does, after all.
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