Kirjahaku

"Finally, a book about grown-ups," said Ellen Goodman of Something Borrowed, a sparkling love story of unresolved relationships and unexpected second chances. Gale and Gary are a divorced couple reunited, after fifteen years, at their son's wedding--where, to their own astonishment, old passions are rekindled. It's a novel "full of wise observation, mordant wit, and a fine comic sense...a pleasure to read" (San Francisco Chronicle).

At the center of this "straight-to-the-gut" (Publishers Weekly) novel is strong, lovely Augusta--Gus--wife and mother of three children, who is dying of cancer. In her last weeks she sits for a sculptor capturing her spirit in bronze--a brave final gesture for her young family. "Above all, this poetic story is about the small, strange, and important ways people have of expressing love" (Christian Science Monitor).

"Marshall has the essential novelist's gift, the creation of vivid characters," said the New York Times. In her new novel, she has again created a cast both real and vibrant. At sixty-three, Judge Gregory Brennan is on the brink of retirement. With his youngest daughter headed for college, he envisions traveling abroad, basking in a repose that his demanding career has not allowed, with his wife, Audrey, at his side. But Audrey has other ambitions. At forty-nine, she sees the mythic empty nest as an opportunity to explore her own potential -- as a medical student. When Audrey reveals her plans, Gregory is overwhelmed, and he emotionally retreats, causing a rift that neither one of them ever anticipated. Marshall has been praised for her insight into the complexities of modern marriage, capturing it as "an institution about competing needs and shifting wants" (Baltimore Sun). In The Court of Common Pleas, marriage is not unlike the general trial court where Gregory presides. But the ruling in Gregory and Audrey's own case remains to be seen. Can their disparate life plans be mediated and their differences reconciled? Marshall offers a nuanced portrait of a marriage in the throes of a midlife crisis and reveals, with an encompassing kindness, the tenderness, frustration, bewilderment, and ultimately the joy of a marriage willed to endure.

The Silence Of Your Name revolves around the suicide of Marshall's charismatic and idealistic young husband, Tim Buxton, while they were in Ghana with Operation Crossroads Africa - a progenitor of the Peace Corps. Marshall weaves in her husband's hidden family history, one tied to Boston's wealthy social scene and the deaths of notorious Black Sun publisher Harry Crosby and Tim's aunt Josephine Rotch Bigelow. By allowing readers to experience these distinct periods of time in great detail, Marshall illuminates the toxic effects of denial across classes and generations.As Marshall moves on with her life, now a novelist and young widow, she must navigate her way in the '70s publishing world with the guidance of her friend Philip Roth, while still processing the grief of losing her husband. Decades later, Marshall finds herself in the footprints of her past, journeying to Ghana and reuniting with a royal Queen-Mother and the steadfast community that offered her its support decades earlier. As Pulitzer Prize-winning author Megan Marshall writes, she "is relentless in her quest for understanding and release from grief and guilt ...] but wisdom comes incrementally and her readers partake eagerly at each stage until we, too, have learned that grief may be transformed into love - and brilliant, soothing prose."