David Joy writes ugly in beautiful words—it may be this paradox that keeps him firmly on my must-read list. His gaze on social problems is unblinking yet compassionate. This novel is not an easy read, but it’s definitely a rewarding one. Two hideous attacks, one on a young Black artist and the other on a deputy sheriff, are the central mysteries here, but the theme is racism and its impact on people all along the political scale. The focus on the modern Ku Klux Klan sickened me. Then the ultimate chapter tore my heart apart, mended it, filled it to overflowing. I experienced it twice. It may be the finest final chapter I’ve ever read.

"...We read fiction because it suggests that life has a shape, and we feel…consoled, I think he said, by that notion. Consoled to think that life isn't just one damn thing after another. That it has sequence and consequence....I think it was more or less the idea that fictional narrative made life seem to matter, that it pushed away the meaninglessness of death."

Miller uses marriage as a devise to give sequence and consequence to the lives of several couples in this book: The main couple Annie and Graham, and also Graham and his first wife, Frieda. We peer more briefly into the marriages of Lucas and Jeanne, Edith and Mike, Natalie and Don, and another couple, Sarah and Thomas.

Memory is faulty, it is changeable, and the loss of memories is a theme throughout this work. It's no accident that the protagonist, Annie, is a photographer, known to distance herself from her subjects and occasionally to hide behind her Rolleiflex, unreadable. Annie relies on photographs to augment her memory until, at the novel's conclusion, she is forced to use her own capacity for memory.

Annie's husband, Graham, is the cynosure of the book. Graham is the archetypal extrovert, living life large with enormous appetites. He feels everything, and is deeply loved by his wives, his children, and his friends. "Pleasure was who Graham was. It was his gift. It was the reason he'd said yes. As he almost always did." Miller has composed this story carefully, delicately, from the perspectives of several people, but always the subject returns to Graham.

Monogamy is not always a happy tale, but it's real and it's raw and it's beautiful. Like life.

Great American writer Russell Banks wrote a review of Monogamy in The New York Times, and I added it to my TBR due to my respect for him, and his nuanced writing. I'm so pleased he gave this book his recommendation. And that I listened.