The Marriage of Anna Maye Potts: A Novel

Rating:
Summary: Difficult Love
Review: The actual marriage of Anna Maye Potts occurs on p.200 of this absorbing and wonderfully grounded novel. After much disappointment and hope, Anna and Louie finally become man and wife, and they make love for the first time in a motel room in Atlantic City, where they have chosen as the destination of their honeymoon.

This love scene is among the best I've seen in any work of fiction. We view the entire episode through Anna's eyes, a woman inexperienced in sex and craving for tender love. She feels that "the joy and freedom was lost to the suddenness and his bruising kiss, his angry struggling with her bra;" she notices that "the room was too visible and the light too harsh." The man she is in love with has a "lurid grin" on his face; when his shirt is off, she sees his "shaggy chest and gray, as he undid and stripped off his pants." There does come a point, though, when "the rudeness had turned to grace," and he strokes her back and kisses her when he sees her tears.

There is nothing sentimental in this almost brutal depiction of sexual desire and loneliness. As in the rest of this truly remarkable book, love always comes with heart-wrenching costs, and happiness always demands painful personal sacrifices. I read this book in a café in a single afternoon, identifying with Anna Maye Potts without any reservation, and was completely captivated by the story. There was deep empathy in my heart after I finished reading; it was as if the gravity and compassion the author showed in the novel also illuminated my own life, and I was sharing his anger, sorrow and, yes, also love, for this imperfect world and our imperfect lives.

Rating:
Summary: Gritty Debut Delivers the Goods
Review: The gritty realism and shattered lives of the characters here make this an outstanding debut novel. Henry delves deep into these mundane lives, slowly unearthing the humanity and complexity in characters exhausted by their day-to-day doldrums. This blue-collar odd-couple romance has zero by way of sap or senitment and was a genuine pleasure to read.

Rating:
Summary: Difficult Love
Review: This is a great book in the tradition of Hardy, Zola, Norris and Dreiser. Alcoholism, adultery, violence and dialogue worthy of Chandler make this book a must-read for anyone interested in the American working-class experience. The power of the unspoken and even the unsayable is so strong between all these characters, but especially the two lead characters, who struggle under major personal burdens without whining about them. Reminds me of Cather, but also Carver, although a different milieu here. The only novel I've ever read where the protagonist in tough times is a woman working in a factory. No sugary ending -- you really wonder whether trouble is not as much ahead of these two as it was behind. Terrific piece of American realism, get it and read it.

Rating:
Summary: American Naturalism Alive and Well
Review: This is a great book in the tradition of Hardy, Zola, Norris and Dreiser. Alcoholism, adultery, violence and dialogue worthy of Chandler make this book a must-read for anyone interested in the American working-class experience. The power of the unspoken and even the unsayable is so strong between all these characters, but especially the two lead characters, who struggle under major personal burdens without whining about them. Reminds me of Cather, but also Carver, although a different milieu here. The only novel I've ever read where the protagonist in tough times is a woman working in a factory. No sugary ending -- you really wonder whether trouble is not as much ahead of these two as it was behind. Terrific piece of American realism, get it and read it.