Books about relationship ambiguity, losing self in marriage, etc...?

[Alcemeg]

Hello folks -- I just wanted to know if anyone can recommend any good books that deal with being unhappy in a long-term relationship but having trouble working out the way forward.

My Googling/Amazon skills can't be that great because there must be some excellent reads about this sort of thing, I just haven't found them yet!

Just to add, I mean fiction/novels rather than self-help books.

I enjoyed Angela Jackson's "The Emergence of Judy Taylor" but have failed to find anything else along those lines...

Do you mean fiction books?

The Women's Room (Marilyn French) is excellent, and addresses de-selfing and relationships in a classic feminist novel.

Jenny Offill writes well with this as a theme too - Dept of Speculation, or recently Weather.

Elizabeth Strout?

Virginia Woolf??

If you mean non-fiction / self-help then ignore me :-)

Also Barbara Kingsolver - try Unsheltered. It's a secondary theme there, but a great book.

I've just googled your Angela Jackson book as I don't know it - Google books says the genre is "domestic fiction" so you could try looking within that?? Or look on Goodreads for 'recommended if you liked this'. You may have tried both of these things!

Down Among the Women by Fay Weldon. It's from the 1970s and in some ways very much a book of its time, but in other ways surprisingly and a but depressingly current...

Thank you both!

I read The Women's Room many, many years ago and might re-read it.

Virginia Woolf I've read, and some Fay Weldon, but not Down Among the Women.

The other suggestions look interesting!

Unfortunately, if you search "domestic fiction" on Amazon it comes up with no end of chintzy dross...!

Many thanks again for the tips.

Not sure if it fits the bill exactly but Tessa Hadley writes about relationships and families. Lit fiction but easy to read.

The Post-Birthday World by Lionel Shriver

The Wife by Meg Wolitzer. Fantastic book.

The Amateur Marriage by Anne Tyler , quite bleak, it's not a feel good read, I read it ages ago but it's stuck with me.

Carol Shields has a couple of novels on this theme - Happenstance is told from each side separately for instance. Then A Celibate Season tell the story of a torubled marriage with Carol Shields telling one side and another author the other.

Late to the party @Alcemeg, sorry, but I think Margaret Atwood’s The Edible Woman might well fit your requirements.

Thank you very much, everyone. My reading pile is growing! 😊

Too good to leave too bad to stay. Non fiction

@QuentinWinters thank you, but I'm looking for fiction. There are so many self-help books on this topic, but there don't seem to be many novels...? Good novels?

Are you in an unhappy marriage, OP?

Making a reading list seems to me to be a particularly unhelpful response.

@Gruntwork
No, I'm writing a novel about a previous unhappy marriage 😁 and I think to make a good job of it, it's important to read as much as possible in this genre. Only I seem to be having trouble locating the kind of book I have in mind...

Nah - reading is displacement. Just write your book.

@Gruntwork

Nah - reading is displacement. Just write your book.

Well, I'm currently finalising the second draft. As part of that I want to be fully immersed in the subject-matter, and since I'm always reading something, it might as well be relevant!

OK, just scanning my bookshelf, Tana French Broken Harbour (very sad though), Marian Keyes has done a few. The Break. Angels. Echoes by Maeve Binchy. Selfish People by Lucy English

Thank you, @QuentinWinters! I've tried Marian Keyes a few times and just could never quite get on with it, not sure why (makes me feel a bit perverse). I'll check out the rest!

Middlemarch has a lot about marriage in it or Anna Karenina, or to be a bit more modern what about Revolutionary Road or Rebecca? Although that quartet would probably put you off marriage for life!

@JaninaDuszejko thank you, great suggestions. I've read all of those!

The more I look, the more I am not sure if there is a novel out there that deals with precisely what I am describing. Think of all the threads on here, time and time again, with someone wondering whether to LTB or not (not sure if they're imagining that something might be wrong, when clearly there is). That's the kind of thing I'm writing about, from my own experience, in the hope of describing the nuts and bolts of a way out for someone who is used to putting others first. But if there is a book, or books, I'd like to read them...

I can find all sorts of books about affairs and crime, and even about dissatisfaction and restlessness (e.g. Madame Bovary), but not specifically about an unhealthy pattern of care/subservience in which the woman is increasingly lost but cannot see what to do about it because she lacks autonomy. I mean, it's such a common experience that maybe no one thought it was worth writing about.

Or maybe not enough women manage to escape, and those who do would rather not revisit all that anguish and confusion. (It's taken me more than 20 years to do so...!)

“The Other Wife” - Claire McGowan came to mind.

Night Waking by Sarah Moss