Sorting Out a Marriage’s Mysteries

I Married You for Happiness is a revealing recollection of the deep sorrows and overwhelming joys that make up a marriage. Author Lily Tuck opens this winner of the National Book Award with Nina at her husband’s death bed, holding his hand as it grows cold. The reader then moves with Nina through a mosaic of vivid memories, distorted recollections, and fantasies of her relationship with her mathematician husband, Philip.

Nina, an eccentric French artist, goes off on multiple nebulous tangents as she contemplates the mysteries and intimate secrets that sculpted her 43-year relationship with Philip. Wondering if they were truly happy, Nina recalls the words of her therapist, “the present can’t be changed, but one can alter the past.” Layered memories and mathematics coalesce as Nina reconstructs the infidelities, jealousies, and surprises that built their union.

With her face now crinkled and hair that has grown gray, Nina discovers a sense of integrity, rather than despair, in the legacy of her marriage. Through small, vital snapshots of two lives closely shared, readers sink deep into the skin of a long-standing and imperfect, albeit fulfilling, relationship.

For better or worse, this marriage endured and ultimately, the love Nina and Philip have for each other is unproven and unpredictable. This marriage, like many, had scandal, tragedy, and sorrow. It also had happiness. I Married You for Happiness is a deeply moving one-night vigil that proves to be an elegy to a man and a marriage.

Helen M. Farrell, M.D., is an instructor at Harvard Medical School and a staff psychiatrist at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston.