Beloved Stranger

By Boylan, Clare

Publishers Summary:
What happens when madness shatters a marriage? An acclaimed Irish novelist explores this question in a comic, contemporary take on King Lear After fifty years of marriage in the same Dublin suburb, Dick and Lily Butler enjoy a "safe" life of compromise, of small and loving concessions to each other. Then one night their happy, balanced world is upended forever, when Lily wakes to find Dick under the bed, holding a shotgun, convinced there's an intruder in the house. This darkly comic incident marks Dick's terrifying plunge into insanity, his freefall into a world of imaginary enemies and sexual fantasies. For Lily, an old-fashioned wife who has accepted her partner for better or worse, there is nowhere to turn. Now, for the first time, she finds herself unable to follow where her husband leads and is utterly disoriented by this freedom. She is forced to confront the rock face of marriage; having been bound together, she and Dick are now marooned together Part thriller, part love story, part macabre comedy, Beloved Stranger is also an analysis of marriage at the end of the millennium-a changeless institution in a vastly altered world.

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ISBN
978-1-58243-096-6
Publisher
Counterpoint Press


REVIEWS

Library Journal

Reviewed on December 1, 2000

Dick and Lily Butler married young. Dick was always eccentric and volatile, while Lily, a thoughtful and intelligent woman, has always felt somewhat trapped by the expectations of her era that she be docile and subservient. As they approach their 50th wedding anniversary, Lily remembers her wedding-day thought that she should not marry Dick and her determination, once married, to honor her vows. ...Log In or Sign Up to Read More

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