Book Review & Giveaway: Last Couple Standing

Synopsis:

The Core Four have been friends since college: four men, four women, four couples. They all got married around the same time, had kids around the same time, and now, fifteen years later, they’re getting divorced around the same time. Three of the Core Four unions have crumbled, inspiring Jessica and Mitch Butler to take a long, hard look at their own marriage. Can it be saved? Or is divorce, like a fortysomething virus, inescapable?

Jessica and Mitch are determined not to end up like their divorced friends. To maximize their chance at immunity, they agree to try a radical approach.

The believe that their friends’ divorces had mostly to do with sex — having it, not having it, wanting to have it with other people — so they decide to relax the limitations upon their relationship. Terms are negotiated, conditions agreed to. The Butlers embark on an experiment. They risk their otherwise happy, functional marriage by breaking some very serious, heretofore adhered-to rules, believing they’ve discovered the next evolution of marriage.

As lines are crossed and hot bartenders pursued, they start to wonder, individually, if they’ve made a huge mistake. They get in over their heads, and their journey is sexy, fun, painful, messy, and, ultimately, completely surprises both of them.

Sometimes doing something bad is the only way to get to the heart of what’s really good.

Review:

Matthew Norman is the author of Domestic Violets and We’re All Damaged. In his third novel, Last Couple Standing, he again tackles the complications of domesticity in his signature style. Norman relates that the idea for Last Couple Standing came to him over dinner in Baltimore with a group of male friends, all of whom were married. One posed the question, “What would happen if one of us got divorced?” Norman says “talked through a sort of domino effect in which one couple after another falls. Eventually, there’d be one couple left: the last couple standing. It seemed like a cool idea for a book.”

Jessica and Mitch have reached the point in their lives when they recognize that they are no longer young. The carefree days of only having to worry about each other’s needs are gone because they are parenting two adorably inquisitive children under the age of ten: Jude and Emily. Mitch is a high school English teacher, while Jessica is a psychotherapist. Juggling the demands of careers and family life leaves them understandably tired, and intimacy is a priority less often than either would like. And predictable. They haven’t fallen out of love, but their relationship has evolved into one of comfort and reliability. Watching their friends’ relationships fall apart — some surprisingly — frightens them. Neither of them want to live without the other and, as Jessica texts Mitch during a girls’ night out with her now-single friends, “Divorce is awful. we’re never getting one.” In fact, Norman says that writing the scenes featuring all of the wives or husbands together was his favorite part of drafting the book. “Splitting the groups up by gender and then juxtaposing them against each other was as much fun as I’ve ever had while writing a novel. It gave me the chance to toy around with gender roles and to challenge the idea that men behave one way and women behave another way.”

Jessica and Mitch are likable, earnest, and devoted to their children. Clearly, they have an enviable relationship as illustrated by Norman through their frequently hilarious conversations. They know each other well, they anticipate each other’s thoughts, and they co-parent effectively. Well, except for Mitch having taken the kids to see E.T. which has convinced both of them that the scary little extraterrestrial is lurking in the closets of their bedrooms. As a result, the kids are having trouble sleeping, and the bleary-eyed parents end up sleeping with them when efforts to convince them that E.T. went back to his home planet fail.

A series of believable discussions lead to Jessica and Mitch agreeing to an “open” marriage — with ground rules, including a prohibition on repeat instances of intimacy with someone else because that would venture into the realm of an affair. They agree to be honest about their extramarital activities, but are limited to three questions that can be posed to each other about their encounters.

The arrangement leads to complicated feelings and Norman explores them with candor and empathy. The situation becomes competitive. And there’s the issue of where to meet new people in the age of dating apps and swiping right or left which leads to complications.

Set in Baltimore — Smalltimore, as Norman dubs it — the story is populated with an intriguing and entertaining cast of supporting characters, including the other members of the Core Four and Luke, a sensitive and outstanding student in Mitch’s class who also lives next door. Jessica and Mitch spend several evenings observing Luke’s father moving out of the family residence while Luke hides on a tree stump in the backyard, reading. And there’s Scarlett, an extremely intelligent but wild student who is Jessica’s client, as well as one very hot bartender who builds furniture from repurposed wood.

Are sexual encounters with new partners an effective way for married couples to find their way back to each other? Norman examines what actually constitutes love in the context of marriage, jealousy, societal norms, parenthood. He posits that when you add in “the sheer logistical complications of infidelity, you have . . . well, a recipe for disaster.” In his capable hands, the results of Jessica and Mitch’s experiment are frequently hilarious, often heart-wrenching, and always, despite the seeming absurdity of their thesis, engrossing and touching. Last Couple Standing is extremely entertaining, while both insightful and perceptive. Norman possesses the rare ability to make readers laugh while touching their hearts and making them think deeply about his subject matter. Last Couple Standing might inspire dialogues between married couples about how to safeguard their own relationships from destruction.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received one copy of Last Couple Standing free of charge from the author. I was not required to write a positive review in exchange for receipt of the book; rather, the opinions expressed in this review are my own. This disclosure complies with 16 Code of Federal Regulations, Part 255, Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.