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Married Sex: A Love Story

Review

Married Sex: A Love Story

Those who are 1) married and 2) middle-aged and older should read MARRIED SEX by Jesse Kornbluth. It’s an unvarnished, literary and entertaining look at why men do the foolish things they do. Blaise Pascal famously said that “(a)ll of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” To put it another way, there are men who, when walking down a one-way, four-lane street devoid of traffic, will deliberately head toward the solitary open manhole and attempt to jump in.

Many, if not all, men of a certain age will see themselves in Kornbluth’s David Greenfield, a white-shoe Manhattan divorce attorney who specializes in representing the wives of the rich and famous (as well as the rich and famous wives), the antithesis of New York’s hoi polloi. David has a successful law practice and a wonderful daughter away at college; his greatest blessing, though, is his marriage to Blair, a Barnard dean. As David tells us early on in the first person narrative of MARRIED SEX, he loves Blair more now than he did when they were married two decades ago. As empty nesters of a sort, they have settled into a quiet and comfortable routine that is not at all boring.

"What sets MARRIED SEX apart from the pack is Kornbluth’s style, which puts one in the mind of Norman Mailer here and John Barth there, while maintaining an original voice and pitch all the way through in what is ultimately a cautionary tale."

They even have a Plan B, if you will, one created as the result of an outlier. Many years before, David had a brief affair that tested but did not break their marriage. The two made a post-traumatic agreement: If David was ever again tempted to stray, he would first bring the object of his potential affection home, with the object being a threesome.

I can envision the male eyebrows raising as mine did. One could be forgiven if the first reaction is “Oh...yeah…” before the second reaction of “oh…” rams into it. For David and Blair, the agreement has worked as an unbreached buffer until the “now” of the book, when David is approached and propositioned by Jean Coin, a quietly sultry and semi-reclusive photographer. She asks David to be her lover for six weeks, at the end of which she will leave to go overseas and their relationship will be over. David upholds his end of his agreement with Blair. The couple meets the single, and things get interesting.

How interesting do they get? Let me say generally that Kornbluth reveals several layers of “interesting.” None of them are unexpected, but all of them, sexual and otherwise, are described in a graphic but literate manner. About that “literate” comment: MARRIED SEX, which might have had a more imaginative title, is remarkably well-written. One would expect this of Kornbluth, who has been an important journalist and commentator of the cultural scene since before I was born...well, maybe not that long, but certainly for decades. I found myself underlining passages, from first page to last, some of which to incorporate into my own conversations (with proper credit to Kornbluth, of course) and others for their wisdom.

As some have noted elsewhere, one can see the ending coming, but that can be said about many worthy books these days. What sets MARRIED SEX apart from the pack is Kornbluth’s style, which puts one in the mind of Norman Mailer here and John Barth there, while maintaining an original voice and pitch all the way through in what is ultimately a cautionary tale. It is easy to forget that this is Kornbluth’s first novel; let us hope that we don’t have to wait 30 years or so for his next.

Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub on August 28, 2015

Married Sex: A Love Story
by Jesse Kornbluth

  • Publication Date: August 25, 2015
  • Genres: Fiction
  • Paperback: 246 pages
  • Publisher: Open Road Media
  • ISBN-10: 1504011252
  • ISBN-13: 9781504011259