Love's Labors: A Memoir of a Young Marriage and Divorce

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Summary: An exellent eye opener for anyone flying blind
Review: I read this book while on vaction and loved every minute of it. I did not want to leave Dr. Roche's life, nor could I wait for the next compelling moment of each page. After reading the book I felt I had to take a long look at my own married life. The feelings that Dr. Roche's book brings out while reading makes you want to analyze where you are in your own life. I enjoyed the book so much that I had to read it twice to make sure I was not fooling myself. Dan is a friend to any married couple. He can tell you what he did wrong and what he would change if he could. He is truly a man that thinks, feels, and needs. Hip Hip Horray. I highly suggest any person that is thinking of getting married, is devorced or does not want to get married, read this book. You will have a new outlook on reality.

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Summary: A compelling account of a young husband's experience
Review: In spare moments in my own recently married life I've been reading and enjoying Love's Labors -- sneaking it, really, using it as a reward. Dan Roche catches so many unromanticized aspects of young marriage that I don't normally read about -- the flying-blind quality, the uncertainty about your own motivations (not to mention your spouse's), the sense that every struggle to break with tradition also includes a struggle to make peace with it, too. I love the attention to the unexpected gender role positions: the wife who wants to travel light and hit the road, the husband who keeps the home fires burning. And the endless reactions to the nontraditional attempts -- all the different reactions to Dan's decision to change his last name, and then change it back, for example. Readers who want easy answers or slick reassurances should go elsewhere, but those who are interested in what one earnest, intelligent, well-intentioned and yet still doomed marriage was actually like should stick around. The more I read, the more I'm compelled, because the parts resonate so well with each other.

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Summary: We don't need another hero
Review: Interesting how the Amazon reviews divide down the middle between "marvelous book" and "boo," with no middle ground. Order this book now and relax: the right answer is "marvelous." I read it front to back the day I received it. Why? Because the positive comments in the other reviews are all true, and the negatives miss the point. Roche superbly captures his experiences of love, marriage, divorce, neither aggrandizing them as universal nor as unique. Male or female, you will probably identify with Roche in some ways. He has set out to present himself as a person, not just a hero, and life at its best (like yours) as a largely well-intentioned medley of experiences, not a prefab script. I'm buying copies for friends, knowing they will thank me.

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Summary: An insightful and moving account
Review: Roche's story is one so common today and yet so infrequently commented on with the insight and thoughtfulness that it receives here. How many of us haven't struggled to balance a marriage and individual identities? How many of us haven't felt pulled in too many directions, slowly and painfully trying to figure out what is right for ourselves and our partners? This book is not an over-the-top tear-jerker. It is not tell-all revenge memoir. Intead, it is a subtle and beautiful and funny reconsideration of what one man underwent in his efforts to be the best husband he could be. It didn't work out in Roche's first marriage, but it's clear by the end of the book that it wasn't for lack of trying or lack of will. The reasons for his divorce were so numerous, so complex, and the book's great strength is that those complexities are laid out for us with articulation and humor and patience. This is a book that speaks to its readers softly but powerfully. I was moved by it and instructed by it. I'm glad I read it.

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Summary: A story to which many of us can relate
Review: This book is a pen-to-paper exercise which parallels what most of us do in our minds -- we look back and try to see what happened in those relationships that "didn't work out." Dan Roche has the amazing ability to view his past through an objective window, analyzing himself, his motives, and his feelings. I believe the tone of the book is not "unfeeling" as Kirkus Reviews suggests, but rather calm and self-observant. We have all had the experience of stepping outside of ourselves and looking at what we've done in our relationships -- and that is what Roche does in this book. He is looking to understand and come to terms with his first marriage. It is ultimately a universal theme he explores here -- the desire to learn from and understand past relationships in order to make better, stronger ones in the future. I admire his honesty and courage in undertaking such a task.

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Summary: We don't need another hero
Review: This book just left me feeling empty. I wanted to feel so sad for Roche, but his lifeless style of writing just left me cold. It's no wonder he & his ex-wife separated--you can't get close to his writing, I can't imagine getting close to him.

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Summary: Lacks Passion, Love
Review: This book just left me feeling empty. I wanted to feel so sad for Roche, but his lifeless style of writing just left me cold. It's no wonder he & his ex-wife separated--you can't get close to his writing, I can't imagine getting close to him.

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Summary: Great lesson
Review: This was really good reading to me because of his candid writing. How he felt about what was going on in the marriage and the embarrassing things he allowed in the marriage. Very honest and well written.

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Summary: A truthful account of a young man's "starter marriage"
Review: While I agree with the Kirkus Reviews assessment of the book, I must add that "unfeeling" is a matter of perspective. I've read the galleys (and no, I'm not in any way connected to the publisher). The author is a friend of a friend who passed the book on to me because I might see myself in it -- and I did. In writing the book, Dan takes the reader, and himself, back to times that are still, to him, mostly unfathomable. And there are always questions: Am I remembering this correctly? How has my perspective changed through the years? Of course, no one can say, not even the author. But he at least realizes that the questions must be asked. In the book, Dan comes across as one might imagine -- at times confused, at times inscrutable: in other words, he's a young married guy. He often muddles through things (such as the proposal), wishes he could rewrite history, and then decides that, well, no disaster occurred, so everything must be OK, right? The book isn't just about young marriages -- it's about youth, and the wisdom of youth, or, at least, what passes for it.

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Summary: The only thing that Love's Labors lacks is a sequel.
Review: Without the sniveling self-pity of Don Snyder's The Cliff Walk or the self-aggrandizement of John Updike's Self-Consciousness, Roche tells the story clearly and succinctly of his first marriage and its subsequent divorce in his autobiographical Love's Labors: A Story of Marriage and Divorce. Roche, with the craft of an accomplished writer, begins this intimate glimpse with a swift kick to the crotch. Although Roche's future first wife, Julie Elman, receives the first blow to the groin, it is Roche who ends up doubled over repeatedly throughout the book as Julie's restlessly changes the direction of her life and his. With almost objective reservation, Roche takes us from their first meeting in karate class; to their first date on a cross-country bicycle ride; to their wedding; to their unsatisfying stint in the Peace Corps; to their separate graduate school experiences; to their out-of-sync careers; to Julie's solitary trek through the Appalachians; and finally to their own separate ways. The most striking quality of Daniel Roche's narrative is its resonance with the consciousness of today's marriages and long-term relationships. If you don't see yourself, either past or present, you will be sure to recognize someone you know in this tale of a youthful, sometimes foolish marriage. Also, in an era of women's empowerment and of constant reminders of the evils that men do to women, Roche's work is a refreshing look at one enlightened couple who has complex issues that are eventually only resolved by splitting up. Nonetheless, this story is not a cautionary tale nor is it an indictment of the supportive husband and the headstrong, selfish wife, but rather it is a quick glance into a reality of the modern marriage. The only thing that Love's Labors lacks is a sequel, the knowledge that Roche's new marriage is what his first marriage was not: a fulfilling partnership.