"This is the Story of a Happy Marriage" by Ann Patchett

I like to come to a book with a blank slate: no preconceived notions, no spoilers, no expectations. That statement is completely true. But it is also true that I like to read books by authors whose previous works I have appreciated, or books that Sam recommends to me, or books that my mom does not recommend to me . . . which kind of means that I do like to have preconceived notions and expectations about my future reads. This sounds contradictory, but it all makes sense together when you think about it this way: I don't want to know about the plot or characters ahead of time, but I do want to know that I'm likely to enjoy the book. 

Funny thing is, sometimes coming to a book with no preconceived notions means the book turns out to be something completely different from what I thought it would be. That happened to me with This is the Story of a Happy Marriage. I did expect a memoir-style book rather than fiction (although the possibility of fiction did cross my mind), so that wasn't the issue; where the incongruity lay was in the fact that I actually thought the book would be about marriage. When I saw the title listed inside the front cover of The Dutch House, I thought, Oh how sweet, Ann Patchett has had a happy marriage like mine, and she's written a book about it. So of course I wanted to read it, because all happy marriages are alike, right? So surely reading this book would be like looking in a mirror and seeing me and Sam reflected back. 

Surprise! This is a book of short stories, and the title comes from just one of them. Throughout most of the book, marriage is barely mentioned. In fact, after the first few stories I started to wonder whether the titular "happy marriage" referred to Patchett's relationship to writing. (I still think that's a plausible interpretation.) But this surprise was quickly revealed to not be a disappointing one, because I enjoyed reading this book so much. Most of it comprises essays and articles that Patchett wrote for various magazines over the years, and it's such a treat to read them all together like this, because I never would have come across so many of them on my own. 

And you'll never believe this. When my copy of this book arrived, Sam said, "But I already gave you that book for Christmas!" and after a little bit of "no you didn't" and "yes I did" we discovered that Sam was right. (What more can you expect from a literary amnesiac?) Ah, well. It's a really good book and it deserved to be bought twice.