A Box Of Darkness: The Story Of A Marriage (2011) - Plot & Excerpts
This is another in those bitter modern memoirs that are circulating now, but better written than most. The gist of it is that Sally Ryder Brady married and had 5 children with (SPOILER ALERT) a man, who became a prominent editor of The Atlantic Monthly, who she realizes after his death was either bisexual or gay but unable to accept his homosexuality. Still, I kept getting an uneasy feeing throughout the book...she seemed just too good to be true (verbally and emotionally abused by her mother and later her husband, she just takes it all on the chin and keeps it together for the kids). She keeps talking about how much she loved him and she quotes friends reassuring her that he loved her...but then why would she write this expose about a fact of his nature he desperately tried to hide even from himself? And then there's the fact which she makes much of that his therapist for a decade never even knew he had had homosexual affairs...but she, his wife, knew. I'm glad she wrote about the good times as well as the bad, but I guess I'm not sure why she wrote it. Knowing the subjects a little bit, the book was a fascinating portrait of a less than ideal marriage. (If I had known them better I probably would have found it too uncomfortable to read--it's brutally honest.)I don't know how many ideal marriages there are out there, but Upton was more than high maintenance. Sally stands by through it all, and her resentments are instead directed at her mother, who refused to attend her daughter's marriage to a Roman Catholic.
What do You think about A Box Of Darkness: The Story Of A Marriage (2011)?
I could not have stayed married to this woman's husband. She's a better woman than I.
—karleefayard
Really enjoyed the writing and the reality of the story.
—Candy123
