Another Marvelous Thing by Laurie Colwin

Another Marvelous Thing Reviews

• 
  Julie G

  This afternoon would be as if etched in glass: bright, hard, and clear.
  
  I read a book review recently in which the reader declared that they “no longer read novels that have stories of infidelity in them,” because they are “immoral.”
  
  Hmm. This is a new one for me.
  
  I understand triggers. Like, even though a story is fictional, scenes of abuse or rape can still be incredibly triggering to a reader. . . but “immoral?”
  
  I had no idea we were all such great moralists. Is this what we do now? Have we run out of actual people to judge?
  
  What's next, an author being brought on criminal charges for a fictional murder??
  
  I don't get any of this. I was under the impression that we all go into this business of reading novels understanding that we are intentionally being immersed into worlds that aren't real. Well, don't we?
  
  Well, I sure as hell do, and, to be honest, I've been so damned moral, I've spent most of my life like Hermione Granger on uppers (and I fucking regret it, to be honest).
  
  I've been so damned squeaky clean, I GO OUT OF MY WAY TO READ ABOUT INFIDELITY.
  
  And then some.
  
  So. . . here's a warning to all of the great moralists: this entire novel is about an extramarital affair.
  
  AND IT IS SO, SO, SO, SO, SO DAMNED GOOD.
  
  It's right up there (for me) with some of the best books ever written on the topic of fictional adultery: Updike's THE MAPLES STORIES, Atwood's THE BLIND ASSASSIN, Graham's THE END OF THE AFFAIR, Flaubert's MADAME BOVARY, Tolstoy's ANNA KARENINA.
  
  It's officially my new favorite Laurie Colwin, and I wasn't sure that any of her work would surpass HAPPY ALL THE TIME.
  
  Once again, I flipped to the back jacket of the cover, and saw Ms. Colwin's photo from 1985 and, boy, did it make my brown eyes blue.
  
  I also made the mistake of reading a delicate scene in the waiting room of a doctor's office, and before I could get a handle on myself, I choked, gasped and sputtered in an awkward public display.
  
  I don't recommend reading this in public, but I do recommend reading it.
  
  Unless you're one of the great moralists of fictional behavior.
• 
  Katie

  Laurie Colwin should be exponentially more famous than she is.
• 
  Karen

  Laurie Colwin....her writing is timeless. I so enjoyed this slim book of connected short stories, all featuring Billie and Frank and their disturbing, wonderful, awful, guilt packed affair of two years. Laurie hits the mark with her descriptions of how torn these two love birds are (Billie more so than Frank). And the story of the birth of Billie's child is something any mother will love. This book is a special treat!
• 
  Richard

  "A love affair was another amazing product of human ingeniousness, like art, like scholarship, like architecture. It was a created thing with rules, language, and reference. When it was finished it lived on in its artifacts: a million memories and gestures."
• 
  Elizabeth Ramstad

  I can never get enough of her writing. I mourn the loss of this perfect author. Her way with dialog is so perfect.
• 
  Jennifer

  Laurie Colwin’s books are my ultimate comfort read. Her prose is uniquely her own and she has a gift for writing about relationships that I have yet to experience from another author. Her descriptions are sparse yet filled with emotion. Her characters are idiosyncratic yet lovable. And don’t get me started on the way she talks about food.
  
  These interconnected short stories about Billy and Francis and their extramarital affair span the course of a few years and allow you to see all the angst, love, passion and guilt that infect their relationship. I was especially drawn into the stories told from Billy’s point of view especially the title story which describes the final days of her pregnancy and the birth of her child. As a mother myself, my re-read of this particular story felt more poignant this time around.
  
  Colwin may not be everyone’s cup of tea but she is one of (if not my most) favorite authors and her books will always hold a special place in my heart.
• 
  Katie Wasserman

  aw you know what, i really liked this book. quick lil read and was a very random library grab. but it was sweet and very human. makes me continue to question monogamy. it can be very true that you can love multiple people at the same time. recommend :)
• 
  Hanners

  That final half got me. Can’t imagine what Billy and these 130 pages would be without Penny. Honestly, I loved this mess.
• 
  Elo

  Je ne m'attendais pas du tout à ça. Mais c'était surprenant en bien.
• 
  Suzy

  Why I'm reading this: I love Laurie Colwin and after seeing friend Julie G.'s review and the great conversation in the comments, I knew I must get to this sooner rather than later.
• 
  Molly Christine

  Hit very close to home in a lot of ways.
• 
  Lydia Goddard

  Not the ending I was expecting from the description. Pretty good, but eh, just ok.
• 
  Michelle

  4 stars | This was my first work of fiction by Laurie Colwin. I read Home Cooking in late 2021 and was eager to dive into her novels.
  
  I love that her writing is so easy and comforting. She'll fool you into thinking you're reading a sweet, domestic story, but in reality, all her characters behave poorly. But they are so endearing while they do it.
  
  This one reminded me of Heartburn by Nora Ephron and Katherine Heiny's work. I was especially mesmerized by the chapter where Billy gives birth.
• 
  Deirdre Keating

  On the top of the list of books-to-not-read while your mother is dying.
  
  I picked it up because I loved Colwin's prose, even though I didn't love Happy All the Time. Then I thought I would scream if I read about Billy yawning one more time. I put the book down but didn't put it away...
  
  Today I had to run to an appointment, where I knew I'd be kept waiting and rushed to grab a book to take alone. I picked this up for the first time in a couple years. I ended up finishing it about an hour after my meeting. Two years on my Currently Reading list and then done in less than two hours.
  
  I'm glad I waited for the right mindset. It was perfect for today and I loved it very much. Loved Billy's sense of humor, her narration of "Frank and Billy in bed", her references to Francis as "my mistress", her oblique signs of affection: "Sometimes I don't understand how I got so fond of a beat-up old person such as your." Her chant on the hell of social life: "They invited us. We invited them. They invited us. We invited them..." Oh my---when he says, "Guess what?" and she replies with, "You're pregnant."
  
  I think the title story belongs to a different novel in some ways, but I devoured it all.
  
  And this:
  One day he said, looking at her brother's old sweater and a skirt that might once have been olive green: "You're the one girl, Billy, whom you dread to hear say: I'm going to slip into something more comfortable."
  
  Of course she had the perfect rejoinder.
  
  And later...
  "Having a love affair, Francis was not unlike being the co-governor of a tiny, private kingdom in some remote country with only two inhabitants---you and the other co-governor. This kingdom had flora and fauna, a national bird, language, reference, conceit, a national anthem (Towards A Scarcity of Needs), cheers, songs, and gestures. It also had a national censorship---the taboo subjects are taboo. The idea that one of the co-governors has a life outside the kingdom always brings pain." >>>that describes well the initial stage of any love story.
  
  I like these two opposite characters so much, I want a full novel with them.
  
  
  
  
• 
  Kat

  Reading Laurie Colwin is like being a Peeping Tom into someone else's fabulous and very fortuitous life. The characters don't need outside advice or even reader judgement and in this case, in this book, both main characters are living marvelously despite their situation. Or because of it.
  
  "Every adult knows that facts must be faced. In adult life, it often seems that's all there is"
  writes Colwin astutely. Francis and Josephine, or more intimately: Frank and Billy, are interesting individuals and are both married happily to equally as interesting spouses. A novel focusing on an affair between two such people holds a predicted promise of banal and trivial content but with Colwin's skill of prose, this one does not. Told from beginning to end within eight short stories, the affair is a charming and fleeting dalliance that somehow adds flourish to the lives of both characters and has no real consequence with the exception of later nostalgia. Colwin describes the dialogue in Billy's head as she and Frank walk through a park: "This pleasant afternoon might be temporarily forgotten, but with the merest effort it could be called back in almost perfect detail"
  
  Frank is a sentimental gentlemen and Billie, a good foil for him, is deadpan, straight-talking and messy. She is the kind of character that would be divisive among readers but Colwin makes her likeable. I liked her immensely, and I loved this book.
  
• 
  Zach Lennon-Simon

  First time I ever understood love affairs. Laurie Colwin treats every character with tenderness and nary a single judgment of their choices. I especially loved how the first few stories centered on Francis' perspective so we sympathized with him and wondered right along side him just why Billy was so cold and withholding of her emotions. But slowly the lens shifts so that we hold both of their feelings in one short story and then the last three stories are exclusively from her side, revealing how she felt all along. It wasn't that she felt nothing, they just weren't for him to know.
  
  Also I love how certain events were repeated throughout several stories but the details changed depending on who was telling the story and also how much time had passed between the event and the telling of said event!!!! Laurie Colwin is just incredible!!!!
• 
  Marikka

  Once I realized that my love of Laurie Colwin's work wasn't limited to one book, I decided to ration everything. Another Marvelous Thing was this year's dose and was lovely, short, but lovely. Whenever I read what someone has written about Colwin's writing, I always see "simple" and "elegant", and those are true, but when I think of Colwin, I think of her honesty. There's never a sense that it's a show. The characters might tend to live in a different world, or at least a different demographic, but the worries and experiences are not isolated to that group and everything is honest, if not always how you want things to end, except usually I never want the books to end. And I always read her books out in public, hoping that her family and friends know how much her work is appreciated.
• 
  Leslie

  I came across this book while dusting the shelves in the living room over the weekend and remembered how I bought it for the gorgeous cover--a detailed view of a bird's nest and laurel by Thomas Charles Bale. Eventually I read it (sometime in 1995, my year alone in my first house) and while I remember loving this book of connected short stories, what I most recall was adoring the first sentence of the first story: "My wife is precise, elegant, and well-dressed, but the sloppiness of my mistress knows few bounds."
  
  With this one sentence, I became a fan of Laurie Colwin's and have since acquired every one of her books--fiction and nonfiction--and read most of them. (I have spaced them out, as there aren't that many; she died, way too soon and too young, in 1992.)
• 
  Andrea

  Laurie Colwin writes so beautifully and portrays her characters in such sensitive yet humorous ways. Even though the main plotline of the book (an extramarital affair) is morally repugnant to me, plus way too Woody Allen, Colwin's writing and characters made me love this book. It's divided into different sections, told from differing points of view, including first person. I just keep thinking back on how beautifully it's told. What a terrific short book.
• 
  Lauren Rochford

  I wish I could read 100 Laurie Colwin books.
• 
  Tine

  Something is unique and charming about Colwin and her fluidity when she writes about relationships. Her simplistic style of presenting daily routines and the exchanges of witty banters are what cures after a rather long day at work or a derailed week. But a Colwin on a good day is a welcome treat, too!
  
  Another Marvelous Thing is yet another marvelous work by Colwin. While the issues and topics presented and embraced in the book were unconventional and could even be even borderline taboo to some, Colwin still managed to fluidly write about the love, pain, laughter, and failure that come out of unorthodox relationships.
  
  I remember reading Colwin for the first time last year when our city was in the middle of a blackout and had almost zero communication lines for eight long hours. When Typhoon Odette was hard, Laurie Colwin gave warmth.
  
  And when the (almost) past week was a b*tch, Laurie drew me smiles and giggles.
  
  "A love affair was another amazing product of human ingeniousness, like art, like scholarship, like architecture. It was a created thing with rules, language, and reference. When it was finished it lived on in its artifacts: a million memories and gestures.”
  
  Colwin should be on everyone's TBR. To borrow the words of other fans — Colwin should be exponentially more famous than she is.
• 
  Megan Davis

  
  This was my first book by this author. First I must say I enjoyed it. I spent a good chunk of the first couple “stories” angry at our main characters for cheating on their partners.
  
  But as I kept reading I enjoyed the story more and more. This is a difficult subject. “Why do people have affairs?” This book is definitely humans doing (not great) things and humans learning from those things.
  
  I’d recommend this book. I chuckled at some parts. I smiled at Billy’s character development. And I definitely sobbed at the end. The way she ended this short book was brilliant
  
  Francis’s character was a little difficult for me sometimes as he displayed less guilt.