Strangers: A Memoir of Marriage
Bruising ... With unsparing emotional clarity, Burden examines the often-baffling ways relationships can fall apart, and charts a path for people looking to reassemble their own lives. It’s a gut punch.
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Burden’s prose reflects both her legal training and her exacting care with language, as if she is acutely aware of how closely her social universe will weigh each sentence ... There's a real deftness and bravery to this ... I felt occasionally disturbed: Would James feel celebrated by all her effort? But for Burden, the right decision was to not stay quiet. Their whole lives were too quiet. She has artfully loosed herself from the true stranger in their marriage, and we can merely wonder if he remains a stranger to himself.
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Affecting ... One might quarrel a bit with the memoir’s title. The truth is, James makes it pretty clear early on just who he is—if only the author’s besotted younger self had been paying attention. And, though Burden makes her pain and hurt touchingly palpable, she doesn’t necessarily cover fresh ground or offer novel insights into her marital postmortem. Still, to her everlasting credit, Burden tries hard not to make herself either a victim or a saint.
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