The Marriage Bed
A Novel
-
-
5.0 • 1 Rating
-
-
- $15.99
-
- $15.99
Publisher Description
An exquisitely lush and lyrical story about marriage and motherhood, attachment and letting go, set in early twentieth century Dublin.
Hailed by critics for "connecting what's felt on the skin with what stirs the soul" (Elle) and for prose that The New York Times calls "shimmering," Regina McBride writes with exceptional passion and courage. Now, she has crafted her most heartbreakingly beautiful novel yet.
"...To my husband's mother, I was an unassuming girl, a kind of empty vessel like the Virgin Mary who would carry holiness in her womb." So begins The Marriage Bed, the story of Deirdre O'Breen, who comes from the Great Blasket Island, a windswept place off the Irish coast. It is there that something stunning happens to Deirdre's parents, shamefully driving her to the mainland.
The crossing takes her to the civilized world -- and toward Manus, the son of a wealthy and devout family. An architect, he is stirred not by God but by imagination: Dublin is struggling to find its way into the twentieth century, and Manus wants to fashion its landscape. Like the city itself, the couple's marriage is fraught with hope and complicated by legacy.
At the heart of this striking novel is Deirdre's family secret. Resurfacing when her daughters reach adolescence, she must confront the questions, "How much of our parents do we carry? Do their sins and frailties shape who we become to our own children?" How Deirdre veers from her husband to embrace these answers makes for a sensuous, page-turning read.
The Marriage Bed is a profound work: an inquiry into the extremes of erotic love and a testament to the power of longing and the hold of unresolved grief.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The Celtic and the gothic intertwine in this dark, dreamy hardcover debut by McBride (The Nature of Water and Air) set in turn-of-the-20th-century Ireland. Deirdre O'Breen was raised primitively on the Great Island of Blasket, off the southwest coast of Ireland. After her parents die in mysterious circumstances when she is 14, she is sent to a convent school on the mainland and decides to become a nun. At the convent, she develops a schoolgirl crush on another novice, sharp-tongued Bairbre O'Breen. But her focus shifts when she meets Bairbre's devout, driven mother and handsome younger brother, Manus. Mrs. O'Breen orchestrates Manus and Deirdre's marriage, intending to use Deirde as "a kind of empty vessel like the Virgin Mary, who would carry holiness in her womb." The heavy burden of another's family legacy combined with the unspeakable secret of her own parents' death plunge Deirdre into unhappiness and despair. But when Mrs. O'Breen compels Deirdre to send her two teenaged daughters to the convent school and Deirdre finds herself pregnant, this time with a boy, she discovers the strength to share her family history with her daughters. McBride crafts her tale in rich, saturated language, though her misty-edged storytelling can be frustratingly insubstantial.
