Ten top books about long marriages

Jane Rogers has published eight novels, written original television and radio drama, and adapted work for radio and TV. Her last book, The Testament of Jessie Lamb, was the 2012 winner of the Arthur C. Clarke Award for science fiction; it was also longlisted for the Booker Prize. She has won the Somerset Maugham Award, the Writers’ Guild Best Fiction Book, has been a finalist for the Guardian Fiction Prize, and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. She is Professor of Writing at Sheffield Hallam University, and she lives in Banbury, England.

Rogers's new novel is Conrad & Eleanor.

One of the author's top ten books about long marriages, as shared at the Guardian:

A Spool of Blue Thread by Anne Tyler (2015)

Tyler often writes about marriage, and always writes true. The first 10 pages of this novel are almost entirely dialogue and reveal Abby and Red Whitshank brilliantly. They are arguing helplessly over how to handle a phone call from their son Denny announcing he is gay. Abby theorises that his getting a girl into trouble while he was still at school might have been a symptom of homosexuality. Red asks, “Come again?” “We can never know with absolute certainty what another person’s sex life is like.” “No, thank God.” Their love for one another is as comfortable and worn as the old slippers and colourless dressing gown each wears.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue