It is very difficult to describe a marriage — especially if you are married. In painfully slivered prose Lily Tuck tells the reader exactly what it is like. Everyone will relate to this story, and if you are not in tears by the end, then…well, please don’t get married.

Each paragraph seems like a hasty missive, and it would be a huge mistake if you did not go back and re-read certain sections, especially when Ms. Tuck describes the dead man she is lying next to in the marital bed. Nina and Philip are happily/unhappily married, neither is perfect, but which of us ever is? At the start, Nina listens to Philip come home from work, announce that he is going upstairs to lie down for a minute before dinner. He promptly dies. Before his body and soul can be released from this mortal coil, Nina slides in beside him to privately recant their marriage. This story takes place over one night, and it is both sad and crushingly honest.

Philip is a genius, and the probability of that statement will only come to light once you read the book. I Married You For Happiness, shows in spades what it is like to live in the shadow of a genius. Nina does not marry Philip for happiness, she thinks the coupling will help her find happiness. She skirts a linear narrative and dangerously details the scattered story which goes wherever her roulette wheel mind takes her.

Of course, the couple’s actual meeting for the first time doesn’t come until the end. Along the way we learn that Philip is coveted by his students, and loves fame more than anything. Philip has also killed someone. You have to see it for yourself, and you will be just as uncomfortable by that part of the story as I was. Not to mention how it makes Nina obsess. She looks for a path that includes love, a partner that wants to love, and can show it. Their sex life is vital, and sex is an important thread in this relationship. I may have just witnessed a story about how marriage doesn’t work, no matter how hard you try. How many passes can you give a spouse, how many times can you close your mouth instead of saying what is on your mind. This might be marriage. It is not ball gowns, bouquets, speeches and ice sculptors doused in champagne.

What is the best part of this story, besides all of it? Nina and Philip have a daughter that is funny, witty, and calls her mother on the carpet the moment Mom shows the slightest bit of envy. When your offspring display your best and worst traits, it only goes to show how good a parent you really were. Unwilling to close this book, I finally did when I realized Philip was walking off the last page, and Nina was letting him go. This is a great love story, probably one of the most eloquent I’ve read in some time.