Musings from Brian J. Noggle: Book Report: <i>His Affair</i> by Jo Fleming (1976)

Book Report: His Affair by Jo Fleming (1976)

I bought this book at the Belleville Book Fair last weekend for a couple pennies because frankly I needed something to fill the $2.00 bag I'd already bought. Besides, it sounded interesting. The cover freatures the title in a very seventies script and offers this teaser: The powerful true story of one woman's confrontation with every woman's nightmare. Granted, that was 30 years ago, and some women have different nightmares by now, but a spouse's affair remains a nightmare for some subset of the population.

The first section is entitled Ending, the second Midway: The Second Year, and the third Beginning. So the book right away carries with it the progression of some sort of self-help mental health journey.

Ending does capture the pseudonymbous author's discovery of her husband's affair as they return from a trip. His mistress just cannot help herself and writes him a letter delivered to the hotel, and the husband proceeds to read it on the plane in front of his wife. The woman then has to question their marriage, their life together, and everything she's known for 25 years. I thought perhaps the book would serve, if nothing else, as a fable of how marriages crumble under time and hopefully could serve as a reminder to not let the dwindling communication and elusive intimacy affect your marriage.

However, somewhere towards the end of the ending, it became clear that Jo Fleming was going to overcome the affair by becoming some sort of whackerdoodle post-Sexual Revolution open marriage proponent, and that at the climax of the book, she would overcome her Victorian upbringing and have an affair of her own as she went beyond fidelity.

Ergo, the book develops a series of diary entries chronicling her growth with her husband into some 1970s era Greatest Generation Geriatric emotional swingers. It's rife with dream recreations and interpretations, dialogues between her and her husband, her and her therapist, her and her husband's therapist, and her and herself. The writing's somewhat adolescent and repetitive, easily skimmable--a quality I learned to appreciate by the end of the second year.

Essentially, it's a twisted rendition of The Total Woman; to build a better, more loving marriage, instead of working inside that marriage, this book advocates going outside the marriage to fulfill your emotional and sexual needs. Now, while that might play on Manhattan, where the narrator of this book resides among the so-cosmopolitan set, here in the middle of the country, that sort of thing sometimes gets a person dead.

Oddly enough, even though it's purportedly a true story by a diarist who wants to be a writer, I thought the book might be a clumsy novel. I mean, most spouses don't frequently sit down and share weepy moments while exalting in their spiritual growth and moral nihilism immediately before encouraging each other to keep growing, where "growing" is a euphemism for going all the way with the handsome fellow in the office. Therefore, I felt perhaps someone had packaged up a rough draft of How To Save Your Own Life without Erica Jong's Jongness, or whatever made that particular novel worth its weight in wood pulp.

Perhaps I'm being unduly harsh on this book. Perhaps I'm reeling from the offense at being blindered, as the author says:

Some people, reading this diary, might disapprove of the freedom we have tried to introduce into our marriage; they will be the ones who grew up when I did and have somehow managed to keep their blinders on.

Well, lovey, perhaps some of us aren't so ready to sacrifice our morals and our standards for to serve a tawdry narrative, even if that narrative happens to be a life.

So I spent a handful of pennies on it, and I personally wouldn't spend it again on this book, but I did get my money's worth on personal outrage and words for the blog, ainna?

Books mentioned in this review:

- posted by Brian J. @ 10:14 PM