Married Love

This novella charts with great comic exuberance the disasters which occur when Harry’s mother, her stepson Jackie Boy, stepdaughter Elaine, and her second husband, descend upon the household — and especially upon Harry’s wife, Alice.

AUTHOR

Kent Thompson

Kent Thompson was born in Waukegan, Illinois, and now lives in Annapolis Royal, Nova Scotia. He is the author of Biking to Blissville: A Cycling Guide to the Maritimes and the Magdalene Islands (1993) and several works of fiction, including Shacking Up and Playing in the Dark. His collection of popular essays, Getting Out of Town by Book & Bike, won the Evelyn Richardson Prize for non-fiction in 2002.

Reviews

Alice and Harry and their son Jake are nice people, good people, kind people, and at heart Married Love is a “situation comedy.” It is Labour Day weekend 1983 and the Ontario in-laws are coming to Fredericton to visit. But where the TV situation comedy restricts itself largely to the living-room, Married Love uses all the rooms of the house — upstairs, downstairs, basement to attic. There is even a foray out to the garage, where Harry’s mother’s stepson, Jackie Boy, is practising knife-throwing. Jake is hiding in the garage. Elaine is taking another shower. Harry’s mother insists she is allergic to tomatoes and she isn’t too sure about luncheon-meat either. The refrigerator door won’t close properly and they can’t afford to get it repaired. Alice is trying to cope, learning once again (why do you have to learn this over again every time?) that life is untidy.
“A shrewd, supple writer, and much fun to read.”
– Books in Canada