My Husband's Friends

[a sound copy, but with some shelfwear (and slight exposure of boards) at bottom corners, fading to cloth at top of spine, light dust-soiling to top edge of text block; the jacket is a bit on the tattered side, with long splits at several folds (and several internal repairs/reinforcements with old paper tape branded "The Book Exchange, Long Beach, California"), various small chips and nicks, age-toning, soiling, etc.] Given that the author, Mrs. Henry Bellamann, was somewhat less well-known than her novelist husband, one's first thought was that this might be a roman a clef, based on Mrs. Bellamann's experiences as a tag-along to the more famous Henry, or that (like Grace Heggen Lewis's "Half a Loaf," it might manifest a bit of post-divorce score-settling. However, not so: the protagonist, "Gene Perryfond," is a scientist working in the field of chemistry, and his missus, by her own description, is "naturally a silent woman," whereas Katherine herself was a musician and poet in her own right, and appears to have been a good (and equal) partner for her husband. In a contemporary newspaper interview, she explicitly denied any autobiographical content, while stating: "Of course the thinking, the opinions about problems -- it is my own thinking, my own opinions. I suppose the more thoughtful aspects of any novel of manners represents the mental autobiography of the author." (At any rate, they were married from 1907 until his death in 1945, so it hardly seems like a literary takedown would have been appropriate.) Basically, per one contemporary review, the novel (her first) is "a wise, tolerant, philosophical study of modern marriage and its problems handled from a new angle." The titles of the four "Books" into which the narrative is divided suggest a certain tone -- e.g. "Book One: The Dove and the Serpent in Me Became as One"; "Book Three: If Wives Could Not Hold Their Husbands, It Was All the Worse for the Wives" -- but I haven't read the book myself, so won't venture to characterize it. I'll just leave you with the author's prefatory description of the narrator/wife: "Her long effort to be something to Gene was nothing more than the story of her own soul's travail."

Product Info

Publisher: The Century Co.

Year: (c.1931)

Type: Used

Binding: Hardcover

First Edition

Seller Info

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