Rafael Yglesias' novel A HAPPY MARRIAGE is Scripted from His Married Life & Death of His Wife

Rafael Yglesias (b. Amer 1954) is a novelist & screenwriter.  In his latest novel A HAPPY MARRIAGE, Yglesias writes about a young novelist, Enrique, who meets a beautiful young woman, Margaret, whom he falls madly in love.   The novel mirrors his own life.  Yglesias met his wife Margaret when they were in their 20's, married, had 2 sons and were together until Margaret's death from cancer at 50.  We are voyeurs to the couple's lust, loveless marriage and a rebirth in the grace that comes of a longterm commitment.  There are astute observations of what people bring to a marriage, their expectations and what morphs from coupledom.  "So many illusions dispelled.  So much strength revealed. They had sworn love; they had endured hate." Yglesias best captures Enrique's feelings of inadequacies regarding his writing & his wife.  I liked being a peeping tom in the marriage counselor's office as Enrique's ruse to absolve the marriage for his mistress while knowing their union prevails. The novel deals with the inability to confront mortality.  "No warning of the incredible fact of mortality could adequately prepare the primitive brain nature had given him to comprehend its finality."  And while I was fine being a voyeur to sexual exploits in the bedroom, I was extremely disturbed being in Margaret's hospital room & hospice care.  The sum of a marriage comes from the ability to see the world through the other's eye.  A HAPPY MARRIAGE was more than an eyeful of happiness.  It was also morbid & macabre.