Women's Fiction

Reader, I Married Him

Name: Reader, I Married Him
Author: Michele Roberts
ISBN: 9781933648026

by Michele Roberts

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Overview

After three abruptly ended marriages, Aurora is ready to lose her dreary black trouser-suit and find refuge in the Tuscan sun. It's her new eau de nil frock that she sheds, however, when she finds herself in the hotel room of the disconcertingly magnetic Father Michael. He rides a Harley Davidson, and he may not be a priest at all. One thing is certain, Aurora's radical friend Leonora is now the head of the local convent, even if Aurora can't imagine what an abbess might want with her gun.

Michele Roberts is the author of 11 novels, including Daughters of the House, which was short-listed for the Booker Prize and winner of the WHSmith Literary Award. She lives in England.

Synopsis

Michele Roberts is the author of 11 novels, including Daughters of the House, which was short-listed for the Booker Prize and winner of the WHSmith Literary Award. She lives in England.

The New York Times - Lauren Collins

A typically baroque plot twist in Reader, I Married Him concerns furta sacra, which is, we learn, sacred theft seemingly sinful acts that might actually be justified. It could be said that Roberts has committed her own furta sacra, stealing subjects traditionally reserved for "serious" literature and stealthily developing them in this frothy, ironical romantic caper. Against all appearances, Reader, I Married Him turns out to be an edifying novel of ideas.

About the Author, Michele Roberts

Michele Roberts is the author of eleven novels, including Daughters of the House, which was short-listed for the Booker Prize and winner of the WHSmith Literary Award. She lives in England.

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Editorials

Lauren Collins

A typically baroque plot twist in Reader, I Married Him concerns furta sacra, which is, we learn, sacred theft — seemingly sinful acts that might actually be justified. It could be said that Roberts has committed her own furta sacra, stealing subjects traditionally reserved for "serious" literature and stealthily developing them in this frothy, ironical romantic caper. Against all appearances, Reader, I Married Him turns out to be an edifying novel of ideas.
— The New York Times

Publishers Weekly

Roberts exhibits a jaunty sense of the absurd in her winking 12th novel, which follows the capers of Aurora, a suspiciously thrice-widowed Brit who takes a holiday in Padenza, Italy, following the death of her third husband. At the invitation of her best friend Leonora, an irreverent feminist abbess, Aurora settles in at a Padenza convent. Roberts (Booker-shortlisted for Daughters of the House) humorously guns for the Catholic Church Aurora s nunnery getaway turns out to be anything but chaste. She embarks on a steamy affair with Father Michael, who may not be what he seems (a priest), and enjoys a flirtatious friendship with the local museum director Frederico Pagan, also not exactly who Aurora thinks he is (gay). The twisting, turning plot involving drug smuggling, museum theft, and Aurora s late mother s gun plus Aurora s Emma Bovary-esque tendency to live her life through lessons plucked from fiction, make for more sophisticated reading than a summary suggests. Though overly reliant on shock tactics and exaggerated psychological abnormality, Roberts provides a puzzle-like pleasure in story and character, and a memorable, if sensationalized main character whose attempts to define herself through men have left her dangerously empty and disappointed. (May) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

Despite sensual descriptions of the locale and of nearly every luscious meal, Roberts's (Daughter the House) latest book is no standard tale of an uptight Englishwoman seduced by Italy. After Aurora's third husband dies abruptly, she escapes to that country to visit her long-lost friend, Leonora, the ardently feminist abbess of the local convent, for whom she uses the canister containing her husband's ashes to smuggle drugs and a box of sanitary pads to hide a pistol. The publisher's synopsis, featuring a sexy Harley-riding intellectual priest, thefts at the art museum, and a possibly sociopathic heroine, is much more vivid than the actual novel, which is oddly flat and clumsy. And the book doesn't feel as ominous or tense as Patricia Highsmith's The Talented Mr. Ripley; it's very understated, it rambles, and there's no arc. English lit majors may find hidden wit in Aurora's many literary references, but only if they prefer their humor like their Prosecco: dry. For larger collections.-Christine Perkins, Burlington P.L., WA Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

Echoes of Bronte and du Maurier reverberate in this black comedy from prolific Franco-British novelist Roberts (The Mistressclass, 2003, etc.) about a thrice-widowed British woman visiting Italy. Aurora, a 50-year-old lapsed Catholic, has bad luck with husbands. Her first died while traveling with a rock band in the 1960s. Her second, an architectural historian, drowned in the Grand Canal. She's just buried her third, a devoutly Catholic tax collector who fell off a cliff. After spending a few stultifying days with her overbearing stepmother Maude (who insists on calling her Dawn), Aurora decides to visit her Italian friend Leonora. When they met 20 years earlier, Leonora was a feminist activist. She is now the abbess of a convent in Padenza, but not like any abbess the Church wants to claim. At Leonora's request, Aurora brings to Italy the pistol her father bought her mother for protection 50 years ago. (The ease with which she gets it through customs is scary.) Maude also ends up in Padenza with members of her parish, including the disconcertingly handsome Father Michael, a proponent of Jungian synchronicity who plans to attend a conference Leonora has organized. Because there is no room for her at the convent, Aurora stays in an apartment run by another old friend, Frederico, whom she has always assumed is gay. While Aurora battles mosquitoes and other inconveniences (there is no hot water), intrigues ensue concerning convent relics, Church politics and secrets of both sex and identity. Aurora finds herself in bed with Father Michael, who may not be a priest, and romantically pursued by Frederico, who may not be gay. How she finds her happy ending is a bit of a shock. Aurora is not tobe trusted as a narrator, but she is mordantly funny. Junk food for spiritually oriented intellectuals.