A Happy Marriage is both intimate and expansive: It is the story of Enrique Sabas and his wife, Margaret, a novel that alternates between the romantic misadventures of the first weeks of their courtship and the final months of Margaret's life as she says good-bye to her family, friends, children, and Enrique. Spanning 30 years, this achingly honest story is about what it means for two people to spend a lifetime together and what makes a happy marriage. Bold, elegiac, and emotionally suspenseful, Yglesias's beautiful novel will break every reader's heart while encouraging all of us with its clear-eyed evocation of the enduring value of marriage.
Yglesias's career as a novelist began in 1970 when he wrote an autobiographical novel at sixteen, hailed by critics for its stunning and revelatory depiction of adolescence. A Happy Marriage, his first work of fiction in thirteen years, was inspired by his relationship with his wife, Margaret, who died in 2004.