Marriage Story
Written by Richard Russo
Narrated by Adam Grupper
4.5/5
()
About this audiobook
“In this clear-eyed and deeply moving essay, Richard Russo gives a hard second look at a story he thought he knew—his parents’ divorce—and finds not only a more expansive personal history, but a more expansive American history. It’s a course of self-reflection, compassion, and connection we would all do well to follow.” —Ann Patchett
“I have watched in wonder for years as Richard Russo has danced as elegantly as Fred Astaire. It is almost impossible to see any move that is not masterful in his prose. This piece is gorgeous, hard as diamonds, and ultimately profoundly moving.” —Luis Alberto Urrea
Who better to take on America’s current class war and its complex, moving parts than Richard Russo? The Pulitzer Prize–winning author is a giant in American letters, beloved by critics and readers alike. Among his gifts are the comedy and compassion he brings to bear in his stories; his effortless style, as readable as it is elegant; and his near-singular ability to capture the lives of America’s working class, the men and women who hail from factory and mill towns that have been left behind as the global economy evolves. Russo was born and raised in such a town—Gloversville, New York—and it’s to this setting he returns in his Scribd Original memoir Marriage Story to chronicle his parents’ lives and why their marriage, ultimately, never had a prayer. His mother and father didn’t share the same faith in America, and their divergent beliefs—one pessimistic, one optimistic—separated them from each other, and sometimes from reality, revealing tensions that Russo’s been writing about ever since.
Through this story of his parents and grandparents and his own departure from both a town and a way of life, Russo declares himself a poster boy for the American Dream and also a well-placed critic of it and of this country’s “brutal contradictions.” His dark-skinned father was the son of Southern Italian immigrants, never quite like the other guys, and yet he was like any other G.I. home from World War II: He did backbreaking work on a road crew, and at night he left his family at home to frequent the local poker rooms. He did not believe that his son, whose name ended in a vowel, would ever be “allowed” to succeed. His mother, the more hopeful of the two, believed hard work and education were the answer to everything that ailed the working class and immigrants alike, refusing to concede to the systemic inequities and disadvantages of ethnicity, race, class, and gender that often made the obstacles to climbing the ladder too great, as they did, in many ways, for her.
A touchingly personal and peculiarly American tale, as topical as it is timeless, Marriage Story speaks directly to the raw material from which so much of today’s divisive political climate has been forged. During the most recent election, the author writes, “many of my friends talked about leaving the country.” But not Russo. “I’ve learned that leaving your home is tricky. If I left my country now, I’d just be repeating myself, having already physically left a place that refused to leave me.” His parents would not have left either, “despite not being able to agree on what America really meant.”
“Maybe it comes down to this,” he writes. “In the end, what do we do with love?”
Richard Russo
Richard Russo is the author of nine novels, two collections of short stories, a memoir, and several produced screenplays. Empire Falls won the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, and his adaptation of the book for HBO was nominated for an Emmy. His collection of essays, The Destiny Thief, will be published in 2018. He and his wife, Barbara, live in Portland, Maine.
Related to Marriage Story
Related audiobooks
Town & Country Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Days of Wine and Covid Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Baby, You're the Greatest: A Short Story Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Complications: The diagnosis was bad. The aftermath was calamitous. My new life as a medical train wreck. Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Letter to My Rage: An Evolution Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Exotic Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5People, Places, Things: My Human Landmarks Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Dear Professor: A Woman's Letter to Her Stalker Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5This Is Life: 10 Writers on Love, Fear, and Hope in the Age of Disasters Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Famous Adopted People Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Letter to a Bigot: Dead But Not Forgotten Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Camp Echo Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Orchard Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Junket Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5This is Not Your City Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Uncertain Sea: Fear is everywhere. Embrace it. Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Two Scorched Men Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Cry of the Sloth Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Fire in the Straw: Notes on Inventing a Life Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Man with the Electrified Brain Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Writing into the Wound: Understanding trauma, truth, and language Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Big Lie: How One Doctor’s Medical Fraud Launched Today’s Deadly Anti-Vax Movement Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Orgy: A Short Story About Desire Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Elegy on Kinderklavier Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Dad on Pills: Fatherhood and Mental Illness Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Ocean is Closed: Journalistic Adventures and Investigations Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Devil and Harper Lee Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Inconvenient Daughter Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Another Life: On Memory, Language, Love, and the Passage of Time Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Only Living Girl on Earth Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Personal Memoirs For You
Son of Hamas: A Gripping Account of Terror, Betrayal, Political Intrigue, and Unthinkable Choices Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Finding Me: A Memoir Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Hustle Harder, Hustle Smarter Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing: A Memoir Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5I'm Glad My Mom Died Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5While Time Remains: A North Korean Girl's Search for Freedom in America Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Night: New translation by Marion Wiesel Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Love, Pamela: A Memoir of Prose, Poetry, and Truth Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Woman in Me Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Year of Magical Thinking Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I'll Be Gone in the Dark: One Woman's Obsessive Search for the Golden State Killer Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Sure, I'll Join Your Cult: A Memoir of Mental Illness and the Quest to Belong Anywhere Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Stolen Life: A Memoir Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Counting the Cost Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Good Girls Don't Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Many Lives of Mama Love (Oprah's Book Club): A Memoir of Lying, Stealing, Writing, and Healing Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5See You on the Way Down: Catch You on the Way Back Up! Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Wishful Drinking Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Roxane Gay & Everand Originals: Built for This: The Quiet Strength of Powerlifting Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5On Writing: A Memoir Of The Craft Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Writing into the Wound: Understanding trauma, truth, and language Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Glass Castle: A Memoir Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5How to Stay Married Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5All My Knotted-Up Life: A Memoir Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Beyond Belief: My Secret Life Inside Scientology and My Harrowing Escape Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Love, Lucy Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Becoming Free Indeed: My Story of Disentangling Faith from Fear Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Pageboy: A Memoir Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Billion Years: My Escape From a Life in the Highest Ranks of Scientology Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5
Related categories
Reviews for Marriage Story
283 ratings27 reviews
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Beautiful prose. Enigmatic storytelling. Deeply touching and a story most of us will hear echoing in our hearts, as we think of our own childhood fallacies.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5I found this really wrenching, especially the final ten minutes. Beautifully narrated as well.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The story was touching & poignant. Narrator was terrific.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I liked it. It was thought provoking on several levels.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A short story we can all find a piece of to relate to.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Forthright and interesting. It was informative to listen to and I learned much about the writer and his parents.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5More about the state of our world and how we can relate to each other in understanding.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5This essay is everything that needs to be said. I feel compelled to share it with everyone I know.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5KWell done history of America from World War II until now , honest insights.And I want to read more
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Definitely 1 of America's best writers his observations ring t
rue time after time - Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5I really dislike when people interject politicians or political ideologies to their stories, as most of the politicians don’t age well… the political stories don’t either… when we find out the rest of the story…. Everything was going so well until then….
1 person found this helpful
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Russo is a master. Love his writing. A new Richard Russo book is always a big deal to me. He never disappoints.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Expected a downer but was totally surprised. Filled with insight, heart and love.
3 people found this helpful
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5Russo, along with Richard Ford and Updike, have long been favorites of mine when reflecting on life in baby boomer USA. The gross generalization of 74 million people is at best pandering and a worst reflects a pattern of declining skills. I suggest you enjoy the political free part of the book which is well done and skip the echo chamber missive.
1 person found this helpful
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5What I loved about Russo’s telling of his family story is that it is the telling of all our family stories and how they relate to where we have fallen into place depending on our class or race, our redness or blueness, our growing up in a working class neighborhood or an upper-middle class cul-de-sac. It opens up an inner dialog among readers to begin assessing how much we hate America or how much we love it.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I always enjoy his writing but am now left cold by his political pontificating.
1 person found this helpful
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Looking at the description and premise of the book, a memoir that is focused on the divorce of the author’s parents, I was expecting this work to be depressing, tragic, and the like. And while I wouldn’t exactly call this book a bundle of rainbows or anything like that, I will say I was surprised by how uplifting and compelling the book was to read through.
First off, let me say this right off the bat: Richard Russo is a phenomenal writer. I don’t know how he does it but the way the man weaves sentences, metaphors, and imagery together through his prose is simply impeccable. You’ll be so compelled by the man’s writing that you could go through this book in a single sitting. It helps that the memoir itself is only an hour long which makes such a task easier. But still, in that hour, Richard Russo packs the story of his parents, his grandparents, and America itself.
Hearing the stories of his parents was fascinating because of their different perspectives on America: his mother’s optimistic and sometimes delusional faith in the American Dream and the ideals of its meritocracy vs. his father’s cynical take of America as a country that will push you down if you aren’t white, male, and wealthy. Russo goes into the backstories of his parents to explain how they came to possess such disparate worldviews: his father experiencing the horrors of war serving in WWII, his mother’s desire for independence whilst dealing with a sexist world and her own impulsive failings. Russo does an incredible job establishing these people in his memoir that you truly feel like you know them personally. Russo gives you enough to truly empathize and sympathize with these people even whilst not being afraid to show the flaws in their characters and personal philosophies.
The same amount of detailed character work is also applied to his grandparents as well. While they are less prominent in the memoir compared to his parents, you still get a lot of important details about them that adds context to Russo and his mother’s life. In particular, Russo’s grandmother who was dealing with extreme anxiety from her husband leaving for WWII that left her borderline agoraphobic. With the grandparents, Russo is able to go in depth about mental illness, the price of war, religion, and the roles women played back in those days.
And through the stories of himself and his family, Russo also explores how their stories connect to the story of America. Both of Russo’s parents died believing they were right about America. In the end, Russo sees merits in both ideas but leans more towards his father’s cynical take. Indeed, Russo is not sparse when it comes to detailing the problems with America. But despite that, it is not a completely hopeless read. Similar to what he thinks of his parents, Russo loves his country even though it is a complete mess.
Going off the editor’s note on Scribd, I was expecting more stuff about the Trump era. But there were really only a few mentions of Trump and his followers. I’m sure people going in wanting to hear the author’s take on the Trump era will be disappointed. But I felt the discussions of our present-day issues including racism, income inequality, and the pandemic were brief enough to leave an impact without completely bogging down the story. I believe the stuff we did get worked well with the story Russo was trying to tell.
I’ll admit I wasn’t expecting the first audiobook I give a 5/5 to be a one-hour memoir talking about a messy divorce, the delusional fantasy of the American Dream, and our current political hellscape we’re living through. But this memoir, in my eyes, truly deserved all five stars. Special mention has to go to the audiobook narrator, Adam Grupper. His voice fits this book so well. It had a gruff, raspy quality that matched with the hardened, experienced, and worldly-wise perspective of the author. Honestly, his voice went so well with the author’s words I was sometimes convinced this was the author speaking himself. If you haven’t checked it out yet, I’d highly recommend listening to it on audiobook.
And in general, I recommend you check this book out if you’re a fan of memoirs. And even if you’re not, you might enjoy this particular memoir. There are certainly many ways to spend an hour of your time. So why not check out an incredible memoir.2 people found this helpful
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5
What Is a Premise? " A story's premise is the foundational idea that expresses the plot in simple terms. A good premise will communicate your story's essence in a one-sentence or two-sentence statement."
America has changed and this is why. The rest of the essay was blather to express and justify his liberal ideas. I believe we in America, are not in trouble because of the character's Mother, Aunt, Father, Grandmother or Aunt. I believe it is the character's educated liberal ideas that are why America has changed.
I believe the whole essay was written to express that one statement. Sneaky.... I admit that I was blindsided.
Was this written a day before or the day after the current President's inauguration? America definitely changed the day after the inauguration and not because of of me or who I voted for ...twice. - Rating: 1 out of 5 stars1/5Garbage. 45 minutes of my life I will never get back.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5More disjointed than is usual for this author but Russo’s voice still came shining through. Prefer the authenticity of his books set in the old mill towns, this autobiographical essay also deals with that. Worth reading.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Really enjoyed this, very insightful and well written. I will look into more books by this author.
1 person found this helpful
- Rating: 1 out of 5 stars1/5I don’t know a Trump supporter who is not educated or who would ever say anything negative about people of color.
We support the right of Dreamers to citizenship. Now that the Democrats are in control again why are they not seeing to legitimatizing the Dreamers.
We have Black and Hispanic friends. We support immigration reform while choosing
some control of our borders and voting integrity.3 people found this helpful
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5A meandering book that never lives Up to its own description. There is no real discussion about the break up of America but rather the author's recollections from his own life that dubiously is attempted to be used as a metaphor.
2 people found this helpful
- Rating: 1 out of 5 stars1/5Such a naive, elitist, leftist viewpoints. Plenty of well educated, higher earning Americans voted for Trump because we are capitalists! NOT deplorables, nor are we racist, as many of us are not even white.
2 people found this helpful
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Honest, wise, kind and insightful, Russo writes of his family, his town and country. Thoroughly enjoyed the hour spent listening.
2 people found this helpful
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5The first few sections were exceptional observational prose. Then the politics entered the essay and that was painful. It went from observational to preachy quickly. The author’s views of his personal life were excellent. The last half were not personal observation; it was more like sound bites from CNN.
1 person found this helpful
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Great addressing conflicting visions until the finale. He then stereotypes the right by their tiny most extreme supporters while portraying the left as enlightened and moderate. The bulk of Trump voters are nothing like he imagines, but are trying to preserve the Founders vision of equal treatment under the rule of law. No that vision was not instantly obtained but the country steadily and since the civil rights laws in the 60s rapidly made progress.
Abandoning this goal because perceived progress is not rapid enough with laws and executive orders that discriminate on subjective basis, driven by humans propensity for corruption, is what drives the majority of the right.
In contrast the extreme left fringe attacking the countries foundations is moving into the mainstream of so called progressives.