Fresh FIction Box Not To Miss
Jenny Gardiner | And They Lived Happily Ever After
Uncategorized / January 30, 2008

In one of my favorite films last summer (Paris, je t’aime, which is actually a series of short films about love, set in Paris), there is a vignette in which a long-married man is about to leave his wife for his mistress. Years of mutual apathy have rendered the couple’s marriage stale and wilted. All of the little idiosyncrasies that he once found charming and endearing about his wife have become irritants that make his skin crawl. He fairly loathes the woman. Nothing short of an injection of a serious dose of “I actually give a care about you” could save it. But (without spoiling it!) the husband learns something that completely alters his approach to their relationship. As their relationship evolves, the narrator intones, “Once he began to act like a man in love, he became a man in love.” I love this line, and the concept behind it. It is, in fact, this very kernel of an idea that grew into my novel, SLEEPING WITH WARD CLEAVER. So I found it interesting to hear it verbalized in the movie. There is, to me, such a simple truth to it. Most everybody starts out in a marriage happy (I…