THE BOOK: Can This Marriage Be Saved? A Memoir
PUBLISHED IN: 2020
THE AUTHOR: Nancy McCabe
THE EDITOR: Gary Kass
THE PUBLISHER: University of Missouri Press
SUMMARY: Here is the publisher’s blurb: “In this warm, deeply-personal, and often humorous book, Nancy McCabe re-examines and gains new understanding of her early life and her ill-advised marriage. Borrowing from Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights and Kafka’s “Metamorphosis,” how-to essays and before-and-after weight loss ads, a curriculum guide, Bible study notes, an obsession with Tom Swiftie jokes, and women’s magazine columns and quizzes that oversimplified women’s lives and choices, McCabe examines the many influences that led to her youthful marriage—and out of it, into finally taking control of her life. A few basic paragraphs about the book, touching on its general theme, subject and other basics.”
THE BACK STORY: I started writing bits and pieces of short stories when I was nineteen years old and engaged to be married. After the marriage ended when I was twenty-six, the material evolved into a novel. And then when I started writing creative nonfiction in my thirties, I decided it needed to be a memoir. But none of these forms felt like they were really working. They felt episodic, even though I understood the overall narrative arc of the story. Finally I began to experiment with alternate forms in a series of essays, working on the narrative arcs within each piece, publishing many in magazines. A couple were recognized on the Best American Essays Notable List, and one won me a Pennsylvania Individual Artists grant, and I decided I was on the right track and kept going. Eventually I decided it was time to assemble them into a memoir.
People often comment on what a great memory I have and on the fact that this is extremely difficult material, though I attempted to bring humor to it. It’s not that I have such a great memory–it’s that I wrote early drafts of a lot of this close to the time it happened. And while initially the material was difficult and I first wrote it to try to understand choices I had made, eventually I just felt that I had an interesting story to tell and maybe some wisdom to impart. So by the time I wrote these essays, they almost felt like someone else’s life. It was also a great gift that my ex-husband always supported my work, and, I hope, helped me to portray him in a balanced way.
WHY THIS TITLE?: When I transitioned this material from novel to memoir and was still frustrated that I wasn’t finding the way into my material, I was invited to contribute to the “Do It Yourself” issue of a magazine. Inspired by Michele Morano’s amazing essay “In the Subjunctive Mood,” the story of a relationship in the form of a grammar lesson, I decided to pull out some of the material and rewrite it in the form of a woman’s magazine quiz. I’d grown up reading my mom’s magazines, particularly the Ladies Home Journal column “Can This Marriage Be Saved?” and the quizes (What Your Decorating Style Says About Your Personality, Do you Trust Your Mate?), and I wondered what would happen if I distilled my marriage into that form. I was pretty sure the result would be goofy–but ultimately, I was surprised at how it enabled me to think about cause and effect, all of the connections between events that led into and away from that marriage.
The quiz became a structuring device for the rest of the book. I’d called the short story collection, the novel, and then the memoir Flight Patterns. But suddenly that just seemed tonally wrong. I liked the way Can This Marriage Be Saved? set a humorous tone while conveying the way popular culture can shape our ideas of love and marriage.
WHY WOULD SOMEONE WANT TO READ IT? I think that telling stories and reading stories help us to process our own experience, and one rewarding aspect of this book is the many women who have told me, as one put it recently, that it “scratched the surface” of their own memories. It turns out that early marriages aren’t all that uncommon–and I’ve heard from some people, both women and men, who found food for thought about other kinds of early longterm relationships as well. I also think that the book could appeal to young women, since it’s about those not always wise youthful choices that we make.
REVIEW COMMENTS:
“Why should a reader care about some writer’s long-ago, short-lived marriage? Because when the writer is Nancy McCabe, the examination of that long-ago marriage helps us understand our own struggles for love and independence. . . . This is an immensely lively performance from which we emerge not merely entertained but enlightened and grateful. McCabe’s done the difficult work of probing her heart, which brings us closer to apprehending our own. . . . An engaging, spirited, and thoughtful work.”—Beth Ann Fennelly, author of Heating & Cooling: 52 Micro-Memoirs
“They say it is impossible to understand another person’s marriage, and perhaps equally impossible to comprehend your own, but Nancy McCabe’s Can This Marriage Be Saved? is a wise, funny, and inventive attempt to put those notions to rest.McC abe recounts her early years vividly, with delightful honesty and remarkable insight. Every page is a pleasant surprise.”—Dinty W. Moore, author of Between Panic and Desire
“Nancy McCabe’s memoir, Can This Marriage Be Saved?, is luminous in its need to know even the hardest truths. This story of a young woman ascending is by turns heartbreaking and triumphant. This is a book for anyone who has traveled, or is traveling, the long road to self-acceptance. I’ve read and admired Nancy McCabe’s work for years, but she’s truly at the top of her game in this brave new memoir.”—Lee Martin, author of the Pulitzer Prize Finalist, The Bright Forever
“An inherently fascinating, insightful, thoughtful and thought-provoking life story, ‘Can This Marriage Be Saved?: A Memoir’ is an extraordinary and unreservedly recommended addition to community and college/university library Contemporary American Biography collections.”—Midwest Book Review
AUTHOR PROFILE: I’m the author of six books–two essay collections, a novel, three memoirs. As an adoptive single parent, I’ve written a lot about China travel and adoption, and as a voracious reader, I revisited some of reading of childhood classics and tourist sites related to them in my book From Little Houses to Little Women. My novel Following Disasters is a literary one that plays with genres like the ghost story, the mystery, the romance.
I tend to have many projects going at once, and my favorite way of working is just to follow wherever I feel the most energy is on any given day, which makes me a really slow writer. I’ve spent a lot of time during the pandemic researching the history of my 103-year-old house and finding some poignant stories about the people who lived here. I’m also working on a project related to China adoption and longterm effects of institutionalization on children. I’ve been playing around with a ya novel about gymnastics, identity, and time travel, and have been drafting another novel for adults.
Other than that, I direct the writing program at the University of Pittsburgh at Bradford, and have been doing a lot of remote teaching along with designing a class and some workshops related to the subject of writing and healing. I also teach creative nonfiction and fiction for Spalding University’s School of Creative and Professional Writing, and have had a lot of adventures with delivering workshops virutally. I miss going to see movies on a big screen and I really miss my clogging group, but I have been lucky to have jobs that have allowed me to work from home and I’m sometimes astonished at the amount of new things I’ve learned during the last few months as I’ve gone on teaching and writing.
AUTHOR COMMENTS: I think that the best memoir helps readers to gain insight about their own experience. I’m gratified when readers tell me that my book helped them to process, define, or come to terms with some aspect of their past.
SAMPLE CHAPTER: Here’s the original essay that finally helped me find the shape for the book:
http://bhreview.org/2011/10/11/can-this-troubled-marriage-be-saved-a-quiz/You can cut and paste on the template or refer readers to your Amazon page.
| Can This Troubled Marriage Be Saved: A Quiz | Bellingham ReviewNancy McCabe 1. Which best describes your reasons for marrying him? a. You have no idea. You were only twenty, too young to know what you were doing. b. You have no idea. You were twenty, old enough to… Continue Reading →bhreview.org |
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