Novelist Elizabeth Crane (We Only Know So Much) had a good marriage--or thought she did--until her husband admitted he wasn't happy. In her wry, vulnerable memoir, This Story Will Change, Crane traces the dissolution of their marriage in brief, episodic chapters. She explores the contours of a life that is changing shape daily, and begins to consider who she might become if--and after--her marriage truly ends.
"I need you to know that I loved him," Crane writes, in one of the rare chapters when she veers into first-person narration. "I need me to know why I loved him.... I need to do the math of my marriage and I need for it to add up to something that makes sense." Her narrative tackles some of that relationship math, from the quotidian (choosing curtains, thanking each other for daily tasks, negotiating how to care for the dog) to the existential (conflict about sex and expectations, sexual expectations, conflicting expectations). She examines the ways her marriage changed shape over 15 years, wondering if there were clues she missed, or if some of their struggles were simply the result of being in a long-term relationship. She also deals with the private and public experience of a marriage falling apart: "What do you tell people when they ask you what happened? What is the truth to you? Are you so sure you know?"
This Story Will Change captures the long arc of a marriage and its messy, human ending: ambivalence, heartbreak, deep grief and unexpected flashes of hope and joy. --Katie Noah Gibson, blogger at Cakes, Tea and Dreams