Love and marriage

She meets Sidney Klein, an English academic and writer at a party. Ten years older, and divorced with a young son, he pursues her, fascinated by her icy hauteur. The two marry, but Constance regrets the match.

She saw marriage as an escape from her past; and views Klein as a substitute for the father she loathes. A doctor, he appeared to consider his elder daughter worthless; even unnecessary, and Klein at least loves her. But he, too, becomes controlling, and she finds living in his dark, book-lined flat constrictive.

The marriage totters along, until, visiting her childhood home on the Hudson River, she’s told a devastating secret. Derailed, she embarks on an unwise affair, which precipitates a tragedy. Will this slide her over the edge? The watchful Klein seems to think so.

But why is he so controlling? Does he, secretly, like her weakness?

When she asks, at the start of their liaison, why he’d first approached her, he said that she’d looked so bewildered he thought he should rescue her before she screamed.

Klein does stop to wonder, late on in the tale, whether part of the reason for the marriage’s increasing rockiness lies at his door, but he doesn’t entertain this idea for long. It must be her fault, he feels, because she has no moral fibre, and needs his protection. But who is really the more troubled?

An insightful friend tells Klein that he is the kind of man who needs a wife.

“Where else besides marriage can you find yourself in a moral predicament on a daily basis? You’re one of those men who’s got to be forever choosing to do the right thing so as to silence the voices in your head.”

Patrick McGrath has already shown himself to be the master of the subtle psychological novel, with offerings like Asylum, Port Mungo and Trauma. And this tale of damaged family lives is up there with his best.

Dwelling on the complexities of unhappy families, he concentrates a great deal on the affectionate relationship between Constance, and her exuberant younger sister Iris. There’s a lightness around their encounters, until that bond loosens and unravels their former closeness.

I felt immediately subsumed into this novel. I was held there through all the dark twists of fate, until the surprisingly redemptive and tender close. Constance is not always a very comfortable read, but it’s certainly a compulsive one. It’s a book to read slowly; to savour; and to think about long after you’ve turned the last page.

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