The Arrangement: A Novel

This is a serious but often amusing look at modern marriage and the difficulty of maintaining the romantic edge that most people would hope might endure for decades. Sarah Dunn creates a half dozen very intriguing characters and manages to portray them and their town with great insight and a good dose of irony and satire. It is an entertaining read, but there are really stories within stories, as the main characters struggle with the challenge of raising a special needs son as well as their own "family of origin issues." Their six month experiment with open marriage surprises them in many ways as it turns out that the grass on the other side of the fence is sometimes laced with weeds. There is plenty of wishful thinking and infatuation. Dunn manages to introduce other issues like the emergence of a transgender teacher and the town's ability to embrace this dramatic swerve away from Beekman's tightly defined normality. Lots of social satire presented with a light but masterful touch. I found it a more serious book when appreciating the subtexts than I expected from reading reviews. It is much more than a book about cheating or stepping out. Dunn raises questions about what it means to grow up, turn thirty, raise kids, turn forty and try to keep the fires burning. Her characterization is solid. Her prose is often "spot on." Now I will reach for her others . . .

*The Arrangement* by Sarah Dunn plows some of the same land that Jesse Kornbluth galloped across in *Married Sex*, but with more narrative craft, more novelistic skill and depth, and without the explicit accounts of the sex. Both books are about couples dabbling in extra-marital sex as cure for their marital ennui. Kornbluth's couple, David & Blair, try a threesome, Dunn's couple, Owen & Lucy, go for an open marriage for 6 months, each couple having a disaster. Kornbluth was trying for what used to be called a novel of ideas, but doesn't synch his characters' motives with the plot, and ends up with a sour tale of two unlikable people (Blair turns into a selfish, hostile whiner, David turns out to be a complete wimp), and no real resolution of the conflict, no satisfying reunion of troubled lovers. "A good novel tells us the truth about its hero," says Chesterton, "but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author." Maybe that's what was going on. Dunn's book tells what happens with both the husband and the wife -- unlike Kornbluth who doesn't show Blair's story. Dunn is funnier, more satiric, less insular. With Dunn, we get quite a good understanding of Lucy's motives and emotions, and also Owen's. His fling is a bit slapsticky, like a sitcom version of *Fatal Attraction*, and hers is sweeter and more serious. Dunn adds more to the story than the sex thing -- Owen & Lucy have an autistic son, and that relationship is covered terrifically, along with a kind of parallel story of a billionaire wanting to get rid of his latest wife. The book turns out to be as good as the glowing reviews claimed -- perceptive, clever, engaging. So: Highly recommended. (I've hit Amazon to order her other novels, she's that good.) Interestingly, Dunn's book, like Kornbluth's, ends somewhat hastily, like a banquet prepared by a master chef in which the dessert is a box of tea biscuits and Hoodie cups. Not an improbable ending, and not unhappy, just somewhat rushed, like someone being brusque. Maybe stories like this are hard to end. Recently, I saw that Preston Sturges comedy where Barbara Stanwyck is the con artist who seduces and falls for Henry Fonda. The ending of that movie and of *The Arrangement* is a kind of hurried tidying up, get the dirty laundry shoved out of sight before the company arrives . By contrast, think of any of those sugary romances on the Hallmark channel, which are almost always neatly symmetrical, square corners, no seams, nothing important left unsaid. Kornbluth needed some of that, Dunn not so much, but maybe a little.

After friends announce at a dinner party that they have an open marriage, Lucy and Owen decide to give it a go as well. They are happily married, but their lives have become dull. Lucy is a stay at home mom to take care of their autistic son. But she's let herself become comfortable, making her feel invisible. To spice things up in their love lives, they try a six month experiment. But there are rules, no details and no falling in love.This is the book I read for the Blended Blogs Virtual Book Club. I have mixed thoughts on this book. It starts pretty slow, I found I was not as keen to pick it up which never really went away as I progressed through the novel. It provides interesting ideas that makes you think about relationships. Filled with failing marriages, infidelity, and ideas that monogamy can't work, the idea that monogamy will never work seemed forced on me. Especially with the included quotes at the beginning of each chapter. I will say that there are some amusing parts, but I wouldn't describe the book as a hilarious read.

I’ve been a Sarah Dunn junkie for nearly a decade, and glad to see so many Amazon reviewers noting that this novel makes them want to read her earlier work. Please join my club! Her prior novels, “The Big Love,” and “Secrets to Happiness” are both in my top all-time favorites. Reading The Arrangement has only continued my love affair with her work. Sarah’s voice, her plot twists, her candor, her depth, her fascinating characters, her satire and her wit are beyond brilliant. Can’t wait for more from this author, and I’ll be checking out Bunheads.On a personal note, the debut of The Arrangement directly led to one of the worst nights of my life, which will haunt me forever. In March, I’d purchased a ticket to Live Talks LA, where Sarah was being interviewed in a rare personal appearance. I anticipated this with the gravity and excitement of a Beatles’ fan preparing to attend the last Beatles’ concert. The days and hours beforehand could not tick by fast enough. I arrived with pristine copies of her first editions. I was laser focused on what I wanted, three things: to gush to Sarah (briefly) about the joy she’s brought to my life; to bask in hearing more about the books I so loved; and to finally meet “my tribe” of LA Dunn fans. When I pulled into the parking lot, however, the attendant asked why I was there and I hastily handed him my ticket. “Oh, that was LAST night,” he said, with a laugh. Crushing.

Excelent, I like it a lot.

Excellent book

I enjoyed this book as it was fun and easy to get into. Especially good to ready during quarantine as it helped take my mind of other things!

Lucy and Owen, a married couple, decide to have an open marriage for six months...an arrangement they make with rules. Owen finds a relationship quickly with a woman who has a lot of issues while Lucy enlists the help of her friend, Sunny Bang, to set her up with a guy. This arrangement isn't without many complications, one of which is that one person in the marriage falls for their new lover.It's an interesting look at marriage and I thought it was well written. It also had some funny moments throughout.

It's good to read a summer book in which characters have substance and that can provoke quite a few laughing out loud moments. And it is also nice to have a plot about what happens after "they got married and lived happily ever after" for a change.Not perfect, but all in all a good summer read.