‘The Story of a Marriage’ by Geir Gulliksen (2015) – 152 pages Translated from the Norwegian by Deborah Dawkin

‘The Story of a Marriage’ is a novel about the breaking up of a marriage. It is told by Jon who haplessly watches and listens as his second wife Timmy is attracted to and gradually falls in love with another guy named Gunnar.

As a little inside knowledge about the writing of ‘The Story of a Marriage’ it must be noted that the former real wife of the author Geir Gulliksen complained that during their bitter breakup Gulliksen threatened that he was going to write a novel about the breakup and then he did. So this is reality fiction with a vengeance.

Jon in the novel ditched his first wife when he became attracted to Timmy, and then his first wife prophetically announced ‘Wait until this happens to you’. Twenty years and two kids later…

In the early stages of Timmy’s attraction to Gunnar, Jon is so confident of his good relationship with his wife that he actually encourages her to meet up with Gunnar and perhaps even do more than that. Later he rues that strategy.

I understand that this guy Jon is hurting because his wife left him for another man, but ‘The Story of a Marriage’ could have used a bit of humor. Without any lightness or sense of fun the many extended sex scenes in the novel veer into sappiness. I really can’t blame the girl Timmy for ditching this guy Jon who has no sense of humor for someone else.

Although I’ve got to hand it to the Scandinavians. They can discuss rationally at length what goes on between two people in bed. That’s more than what the rest of the world can do. That’s more than I can do.

The lengthy sober detailed descriptions of the mechanics of the various sex acts between Jon and Timmy in bed are about the only things I found laughable in this entire novel, and I’m sure that was unintentional.

This novel did remind me of ‘Scenes From a Marriage’, a movie directed by Ingmar Bergman which is also about the dissolution of a marriage and which I do consider a much stronger work. In the movie, the husband and wife are on an equal basis and thus each can present his or her side of the story. In ‘The Story of a Marriage’, Jon is the sole narrator, and even though he tries real hard to get inside of his wife Timmy’s thoughts and feelings we don’t really get her views of things.

By the way, I went through several years of watching great Ingmar Bergman films and my favorite of his work is ‘Smiles of a Summer Night’ which is loosely based on Shakespeare’s ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’.

My bottom line on ‘The Story of a Marriage’ is that it is not a bad novel if you can get by the sappiness of its extended sex scenes.

Grade :    C