The marriage plot: The Newlyweds by Nell Freudenberger reviewed

Few could accuse literary fiction of not doing its best to perk up the US export sector recently. It has been a truly remarkable year. A quick glance at my shelves reveals some wonderful new finds: The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach, We the Animals by Justin Torres, Seating Arrangements by Maggie Shipstead and recently Leaving the Atocha Station by Ben Lerner. Joining them this summer – although a second novel rather than a debut like the above – is Nell Freudenberger’s The Newlyweds.

Exactly like the others, however, The Newlyweds comes already wreathed with praise from across the pond. And well deserved too. To my mind it draws parallels with another heavy-hitting US release this year, though at the opposite end of the career spectrum, namely Anne Tyler’s The Beginner’s Goodbye, not least for the cut-glass clarity of its prose. However, whereas Tyler focused on the aftermath of a marriage’s end, Freudenberger is concerned with the start of one.