Heidi Deepkiss

Today, what with the continuing rise of the divorce rate, many people seem more surprised when a marriage holds together than when it breaks up. Yet despite many dire predictions about the gradual death of matrimony, the trend seems to be toward changing the internal structure and workings of that institution, rather than abandoning it. We see an increasing number of books which dispense advice on how to make a marriage more "open". Sociologists have noted a tendency for many couples to form trial marriages in an attempt to gauge compatibility before legalizing their relationship. And increasing numbers of married couples are trying everything from sensitivity sessions to mate-trading in an attempt to make their manias more flexible and meaningful. Jill and Hal Summers outwardly lead the respectable lives of a happy young American couple, yet behind the scenes find themselves undergoing a crisis in their marriage - they find themselves growing further apart and becoming increasingly dissatisfied with their sex life. It is only after they embark upon a new life style - a style condemns by many but which, for them, is a new lease on life - that they find themselves truly communicating once again, realizing that sex between them should be a mutual giving and receiving, not a power play.

Normal. A frequently used word, yet a word whose exact meaning is as elusive as the term "perverse". What those two words imply seems to vary from nation to nation, from community to community, from person to person. Among one African tribe it is considered obscene to expose ones back to others. In many Eskimo communities it is the height of hospitality for a man to offer his wife to a quest. The Bacons appear outwardly to be an average American family. Phil Bacon is a typical-looking father, Louise Bacon considers herself to be like today's housewife, and Monty Bacon could pass for anybody's son. Yet the three of them behave in ways that many others would consider abnormal. But even they are eventually convinced that they are doing nothing wrong. And who is to say whether they are normal or perverse? WIFE GOING DOWN - a novel of major interest to any who hope to find and define their own standards of correct behavior.