This is the Story of a Happy Marriage is a 2013 collection of non-fiction magazine articles by American novelist Ann Patchett written to pay the rent while she worked on her first novels. The success of Bel Canto in 2001 meant that she could largely give up her freelance work to focus on fiction.
In the introduction, Patchett outlines the circumstances in which she wrote these stories and how the skills she developed influenced her fiction writing. One of the stories, The Getaway Car, offers an entertaining account of how Patchett learned the craft of fiction writing. Critical close friends and teachers met through the various courses she attended played a major role. Surprisingly, Patchett’s time at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop proved to be the least influential for her despite its stellar reputation.
This is the Story of a Happy Marriage is different from Patchett’s fiction. In her novels, her characters are no doubt invented amalgamations of her own experiences and her observations of others. In this book, the stories spring entirely from her own life. The titular story, for example, tells of how she met her husband Karl and offers an account of their happy marriage, challenging Tolstoy’s remark that all happy families are alike.
Patchett’s tone is an outstanding feature of her non-fiction articles. Her writing is deeply personal and full of dry and often funny observations about her subject whether it be her dog or her search for like-minded lovers of opera in Nashville Tennessee, a town famous for country music. The Wall is a particularly personal account of Patchett’s relationship with her father, a former police officer, as she herself applies to be an LAPD trainee.
If you are an appreciative reader of Ann Patchett’s novels, an aspiring writer yourself, or interested in how writers develop their craft, you will find the stories in This is the Story of a Happy Marriage quite fascinating.
Novels by Ann Patchett include Bel Canto, Truth and Beauty, State of Wonder, The Dutch House, Tom Lake, and These Precious Days, all of which I would recommend. My favourite is The Dutch House.