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Suzanne
Rating:
Review
Happenstance gives us two stories, a husband’s and a wife’s, in one book. Jack and Brenda are both entering midlife, and have a traditional marriage with two children, rooted in the 1950’s values they grew up with. The story covers one of the only weeks they’ve ever spent apart, when Brenda goes on her first out of town trip alone, to a quilting conference. Shields is compassionate in telling both stories, and does a good job showing how you can never really know what someone else is experiencing, even when you’re as close as husband and wife. Big things happen with both Brenda and Jack while they’re apart, and they both reminisce about changes they and their friends have gone through over the years. What I like about this book is that it isn’t about one person growing and leaving the other one. They manage to grow and weather the storms that marriages are subject to, and end up still wanting to be together – a rare thing these days. The story seems a little dated, but it still gives me hope for couples today.
Best Line:
Brenda, musing about infidelity – "Not sex at all, but novelty, risk, possibility." (pg. 97)
Kim
Rating:
Review
Under the title on the front of this book, it states it is “Two novels in one about a marriage in transition”. I started with The Wife’s Story, and enjoyed reading about Brenda Bowman’s life with her husband, Jack, their two children, and her trip to Philadelphia for a crafters convention. It was her first time to Philadelphia, and her first trip alone, but that was only the beginning of all the “firsts” that Brenda had in her story. I found Brenda to be honest, fallible and human, and though I didn’t relate to her much, I liked her. No such luck with The Husband’s Story. Jack Bowman is a historian who is working half-heartedly on a book his boss thinks he should write. Jack vacillates between pompous and boring. I can’t say I disliked him. I just tired of him quickly. There were specific things I liked about the book, such as Brenda’s new and expensive coat, along with her continual justification for buying it (a quirky thing I also do), and Jack’s parents obvious devotion to one another was touching. I saw the changes happening in their lives and marriage as being, well, changes, rather than transitions, so with each page I turned, I expected more. No such luck.
Best Line:
"He says habits are only habits if we think they're habits."
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