Vendor
	Mohrbooks Literary Agency Sebastian Ritscher

ACCIDENTS OF MARRIAGE

Randy Susan Meyers

A Novel

From the bestselling author of The Comfort of Lies comes an engrossing look at the darker side of a marriage and how an ordinary family responds to an extraordinary crisis.

In Accidents of Marriage, Meyers returns with an absorbing story that explores a topic rarely exposed in women’s fiction—the damaging effects of a spouse’s emotional abuse. Maddy is a working mother trying to balance her career and three children. Years ago, she fell in love with Ben, a public defender, drawn to his fiery passion, but now he’s lashing out at her during his periodic rages. She vacillates between tiptoeing around him and asserting herself for the sake of their kids—which works to keep a fragile peace—until one rainy day, when Maddy and Ben are in the car together and Ben’s temper gets the best of him…leaving Maddy in the hospital fighting for her life. Meyers takes us inside the hearts and minds of her characters, alternating among the perspectives of Maddy, Ben, and their fourteen-year-old daughter. Accidents of Marriage is a provocative and stunning novel that will resonate deeply with women from all walks of life, ultimately revealing the challenges of family, faith, and forgiveness. Randy Susan Meyers is the author of The Murderer’s Daughters, a finalist for the Massachusetts Book Award, named a “Must Read Book” and one of the “2011 Ten Best Works of Fiction” by the Massachusetts Center for the Book. Her writing is informed by her work with abusers and victims of domestic violence, as well as her experience with youth impacted by street violence. She lives with her husband in Boston, where she teaches for the Grub Street Writer’s Center.

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Book Published 2014-09-01 by Atria

Comments

Meyers has crafted an absorbing and layered drama that explores the complexities of infidelity, forgiveness, and family.

Randy Susan Meyers’s second novel is sharp and biting, and sometimes wickedly funny...but it has a lot of heart, too. Meyers writes beautifully about a formerly good marriage — the simple joys of stability, the pleasures of veteran intimacy — and deftly dissects just how ugly things can get after infidelity. The battles these women fight take place on a small stage, yet they’re anything but trivial: saving a marriage, making a meaningful career, learning to parent. In the end, thanks to Meyers’s astute, sympathetic observation, we want these women to win.

The characters crackle with both intelligence and wit. Meyers’ women resonate as strong, complicated and conflicted, and the writing flows effortlessly in this sweet yet sassy novel about love, women and motherhood.

Meyers is quickly taking her place among the ranks of women’s fiction authors who write big-issue novels that explore the inner lives of women in crisis without descending into melodrama or cliché. Readers who enjoy Barbara Delinsky, Amy Hatvany, and Jodi Picoult will want to add Meyers to their to-read list.

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The premise is familiar—a couple raising a family and accumulating grievances about marriage as they reach middle age. But this novel’s unsparing look at emotional abuse and its devastating consequences gives it gravity and bite, while a glimpse into a physically damaged mind both surprises and fascinates.

Meyers enriches her character development with class and career difficulties, as well as settings involving far differing neighborhoods of Boston. Readers who enjoyed The Memory Keepers Daughter or Jeanette Halen's Matter of Chance, will feel right at home in the anxious pages of Meyer’s captivating novel.

The intertwined traumas of emotional abuse and brain injury careen through every family member in this disturbing and deeply insightful story. Meyers captures the necessity and complexity of excavating the truth as the foundation of life moving forward.

A complex, captivating tale. In Accidents of Marriage, Randy Susan Meyers explores a marriage undermined by one partner’s rage and the other’s complicity. The subject, emotional abuse, is usually addressed as a component of domestic violence, but Meyers’s novel explores how destructive emotional abuse by itself can be. . . Meyers deftly deploys a large cast of major and minor characters in telling this complex story. Her painstaking description of both emotional abuse and brain injury are impressive. Accidents of Marriage isn’t for anyone who insists on happy endings, but it rewards readers in deeply satisfying ways.

Meyers creates three distinct voices, with each woman speaking from a place of pain and strength while navigating complicated emotions in the aftermath of a life-changing event. The alternating perspectives maintain the intensity of the emotions and relationships, leading to the inevitable decision of which is more powerful: the harm caused by dishonesty, or the strength of forgiveness and love.

An incredibly accomplished and satisfying read, with an important message.

I read Accidents of Marriage in one day. Like Meyers' first two novels, this one—about a family paying a high price for rage and trying to reknit itself in the aftermath of the unthinkable—is compulsive reading. It's amazing how warm Meyers' writing is even as her stories grip you by the hand and don't let go.

Randy Susan Meyers is a genius of the human heart, and Accidents of Marriage is a profound education on the complexities of love, imperfection, damage, and responsibility. You'll feel as though a magically insightful friend is sharing the behind-the-scenes secrets of a family you may well know. She tells it like it is. No sugar-coating here, only truth in all its compelling beauty and might.

Meyers’ compelling novel switches points of view: Maddy, Ben and their eldest daughter, 14-year-old Emma, all get an empathetic voice. It’s a deft exploration of the borders of abuse and the aftermath of tragedy, the triumphs and disappointments of recovery, and the possibilities of faith and forgiveness.

This is an amazing story about a Boston family and the damaging effects of verbal abuse. Every character is beautifully rendered, and the author's meticulous research (I can't tell you the subject without spoiling the story) gives it such authenticity. It's one of the most memorable stories about a marriage I've ever read.

Beautifully written, poignant and thought-provoking, this novel refuses to succumb to stereotypical reader expectations, making it even more memorable.

A bold and poignant look into the complicated, slippery world of what constitutes emotional abuse, Accidents of Marriage explores what happens when tragic circumstance forces one family to reexamine the dysfunctional dynamics that have long-defined them. Meyers deftly pulled me in to this story from the first page, tying me to its tender and fearless heartbeat, and didn't let me go until the extremely satisfying end.

With the heart of a novelist and the tenacity of an investigative journalist, Meyers flawlessly depicts the evolution and consequences of emotional abuse. A master of perspective with an uncanny understanding of human nature, she has managed to make us empathize with every member of this damaged family. This is an important story, one I’ll be thinking about for a long time.