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The ReadDown

15 Novels About Complicated Marriages

If you loved Marriage Story, you may be on the search for more stories about marriage and divorce and the complicated dynamics between two people. Take an inside look into marriage with our book list, from hilarious fiction about dysfunctional families to heart-wrenching stories about divorce and separation.

  1. 1
    Fleishman Is in Trouble Book Cover Picture
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    Fleishman Is in Trouble

    by Taffy Brodesser-Akner

    A searing, utterly unvarnished debut, Fleishman Is in Trouble is an insightful, unsettling, often hilarious exploration of a culture trying to navigate the fault lines of an institution that has proven to be worthy of our great wariness and our great hope.
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    Paperback
    $17.00

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  2. 2
    The Beauty of the Husband Book Cover Picture
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    The Beauty of the Husband

    by Anne Carson

    This clear-eyed, brutal, moving, darkly funny book tells a single story in an immediate, accessible voice — 29 “tangos” of narrative verse that take us vividly through erotic, painful, and heartbreaking scenes from a long-time marriage that falls apart. Only award-winning poet Anne Carson could create a work that takes on the oldest of lyrical subjects — love — and make it this powerful, this fresh, this devastating.
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    $19.95

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  3. 3
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    Stay with Me

    by Ayobami Adebayo

    Ilesa, Nigeria. Ever since they first met and fell in love at university, Yejide and Akin have agreed: polygamy is not for them. But four years into their marriage—after consulting fertility doctors and healers, and trying strange teas and unlikely cures—Yejide is still not pregnant. She assumes she still has time—until her in-laws arrive on her doorstep with a young woman they introduce as Akin’s second wife. Furious, shocked, and livid with jealousy, Yejide knows the only way to save her marriage is to get pregnant. Which, finally, she does—but at a cost far greater than she could have dared to imagine. The unforgettable story of a marriage as seen through the eyes of both husband and wife, Stay With Me asks how much we can sacrifice for the sake of family.
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    $17.00

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  4. 4
    Heartburn Book Cover Picture
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    Heartburn

    by Nora Ephron

    Is it possible to write a sidesplitting novel about the breakup of the perfect marriage? If the writer is Nora Ephron, the answer is a resounding yes. For in this inspired confection of adultery, revenge, group therapy, and pot roast, the creator of Sleepless in Seattle reminds us that comedy depends on anguish as surely as a proper gravy depends on flour and butter.
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    $17.00

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  5. 5
    The Intermission Book Cover Picture
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    The Intermission

    by Elyssa Friedland

    After five years of marriage, Cass Coyne has lost some of her boundless confidence. Her husband sees their ups and downs as normal challenges in a healthy relationship, but Cass lies awake at night wondering what you do when you need a break from your marriage? It comes as a shock to Jonathan when Cass persuades him to try a marital “intermission”: a six-month separation during which they’ll decide if the comfortable life they’ve built together is still the one they both want. Can a marriage experiment go too far for two people who once thought they had it all figured out?
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    $26.00

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  6. 6
    How to Sleep Alone in a King-Size Bed Book Cover Picture
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    How to Sleep Alone in a King-Size Bed

    by Theo Pauline Nestor

    “I feel like I’ve joined an enormous club, something like the Veterans of Foreign Wars. We are weary with battle fatigue and sometimes even gripped by nostalgia for the good old, bad old days, but our numbers are large,” writes Theo Pauline Nestor in this wry, fiercely honest chronicle of life after divorce. Funny, openhearted, and brave, How to Sleep Alone in a King-Size Bed will speak to anyone who has passed through the halls of divorce court or risked tenderness after loss.
    How to Sleep Alone in a King-Size Bed Book Cover Picture
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    $16.00

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  7. 7
    On Mystic Lake Book Cover Picture
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    On Mystic Lake

    by Kristin Hannah

    Annie Colwater’s only child has just left home for school abroad. On that same day, her husband of twenty years confesses that he’s in love with a younger woman. Alone in the house that is no longer a home, Annie comes to the painful realization that for years she has been slowly disappearing. Lonely and afraid, she retreats to Mystic, the small Washington town where she grew up, hoping that there she can reclaim the woman she once was—the woman she is now desperate to become again.
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    $17.00

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  8. 8
    The Story of a Marriage Book Cover Picture
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    The Story of a Marriage

    by Geir Gulliksen

    Jon, who is losing his wife to another man, is trying to understand what happened to his Great Love, by working, painfully, to see the story from her perspective. With prose unsettling in its precision and emotional heft, The Story of a Marriage cracks wide open the familiar story of a failed love, as it turns cliched phrases over and over again until they crumble.
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  9. 9
    The Adults Book Cover Picture
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    The Adults

    by Caroline Hulse

    Claire and Matt are no longer together but decide that it would be best for their daughter, Scarlett, to have a “normal” family Christmas. They can’t agree on whose idea it was to go to the Happy Forest holiday park, or who said they should bring their new partners. But someone did—and it’s too late to pull the plug. Before you know it, their holiday is a powder keg that ends where this novel begins—with a tearful, frightened call to the police.
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  10. 10
    A Separation Book Cover Picture
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    A Separation

    by Katie Kitamura

    A young woman has agreed with her faithless husband: it’s time for them to separate. For the moment it’s a private matter, a secret between the two of them. As she begins her new life, she gets word that Christopher has gone missing in a remote region in the rugged south of Greece; she reluctantly agrees to go look for him, still keeping their split to herself. In her heart, she’s not even sure if she wants to find him. As her search comes to a shocking breaking point, she discovers she understands less than she thought she did about her relationship and the man she used to love.
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    $17.00

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  11. 11
    Fates and Furies Book Cover Picture
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    Fates and Furies

    by Lauren Groff

    At age twenty-two, Lotto and Mathilde are tall, glamorous, madly in love, and destined for greatness. A decade later, their marriage is still the envy of their friends, but with an electric thrill we understand that things are even more complicated and remarkable than they have seemed. With stunning revelations and multiple threads, and in prose that is vibrantly alive and original, Groff delivers a deeply satisfying novel about love, art, creativity, and power that is unlike anything that has come before it. Profound, surprising, propulsive, and emotionally riveting, it stirs both the mind and the heart.
    Fates and Furies Book Cover Picture
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    $17.00

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  12. 12
    Everything I Never Told You Book Cover Picture
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    Everything I Never Told You

    by Celeste Ng

    A profoundly moving story of family, secrets, and longing, Everything I Never Told You is both a gripping page-turner and a sensitive family portrait, uncovering the ways in which mothers and daughters, fathers and sons, and husbands and wives struggle, all their lives, to understand one another.
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    $17.00

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  13. 13
    The Amateur Marriage Book Cover Picture
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    The Amateur Marriage

    by Anne Tyler

    From the inimitable Anne Tyler, a rich and compelling novel about a mismatched marriage—and its consequences, spanning three generations. From the sound of the cash register in the old grocery to the counterculture jargon of the sixties, from the miniskirts to the multilayered apparel of later years, Anne Tyler captures the evocative nuances of everyday life during these decades with such telling precision that every page brings smiles of recognition. Throughout, as each of the competing voices bears witness, we are drawn ever more fully into the complex entanglements of family life.
    The Amateur Marriage Book Cover Picture
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    $16.00

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  14. 14
    Revolutionary Road Book Cover Picture
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    Revolutionary Road

    by Richard Yates

    Hailed as a masterpiece of realistic fiction and as the most evocative portrayal of the opulent desolation of the American suburbs since it’s publication in 1961, Revolutionary Road is the story of Frank and April Wheeler, a bright, beautiful, and talented couple who have lived on the assumption that greatness is only just around the corner. With heartbreaking compassion and remorseless clarity, Richard Yates shows how Frank and April mortgage their spiritual birthright, betraying not only each other, but their best selves.
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    $18.00

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  15. 15
    Once Upon a Time, There Was You Book Cover Picture
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    Once Upon a Time, There Was You

    by Elizabeth Berg

    Even on their wedding day, John and Irene sensed that they were about to make a mistake. Years later, divorced, dating other people, and living in different parts of the country, they seem to have nothing in common—nothing except the most important person in each of their lives: Sadie, their spirited eighteen-year-old daughter. Feeling smothered by Irene and distanced from John, Sadie is growing more and more attached to her new boyfriend, Ron. When tragedy strikes, Irene and John come together to support the daughter they love so dearly.
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    $17.00

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