A Brief Review: Other People We Married by Emma Straub

1:31 pm - February 7, 2012: 6 notes

A Brief Review: Other People We Married by Emma Straub

For months before reading this story collection, I thought about its title. I thought about the possibility that all souls were once splintered so that we continually encounter parts of ourselves in others and about anam cara, which is Celtic for “soul friend,” and about Plato’s postulation that every person was once two.

These are things I continued to consider as I read Emma Straub’s stories, filled with painstakingly drawn characters struggling to navigate the unfathomable realm of human relationships. The struggles are quiet, not devastating, but potent significance emerges from the author’s choice of narrative details. In the title story—a tableau of a woman’s relationships with her husband and with her gay best friend—Straub describes the couples’ wedding: “The thought of Franny getting married without Charles seemed so wrong. They could have done it without Jim, maybe, but not without him. Who would she have talked to?”

In other stories, relationships, often unexpected, bloom: between a disenchanted housewife and her young, delinquent neighbor, a college professor and her handsome student, a widow and her bird watching instructor. The stories’ events—which are slight—will not surprise you. But the tales seem to have leapt out of ordinary people, people we might encounter every day. You will not be surprised but will be riveted by the complexity of these fictional friendships and loves. You will consider, perhaps for the first time, just how many people you have married.

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BONUS: This cover is so beautiful, I had to do a literary outfit for it.