The open marriage is enjoying a vogue--or maybe it's just a willingness to discuss it that's novel? Either way, first-time author Molly Roden Winter joins the dialogue with More: A Memoir of Open Marriage. It's gutsy, cringey, illuminating, infuriating, affecting, and other qualities that make for an absorbing read.
In her prologue, Winter, a Brooklyn-based teacher, says that she's been married to Stewart, the father of her two sons, for 16 years and in an open marriage with him for seven. The precipitating event: Stewart, aroused to learn that another man was attracted to Winter, encouraged her to pursue the guy on the condition that "you tell me everything." At first, nonmonogamy isn't the natural fit for Winter that it is for Stewart, and at around the book's midpoint, they're in couples therapy: she wants to re-close their marriage; he doesn't. The latter half of the book finds Winter making peace with her situation.
Unlike The Ethical Slut, which becomes Winter's reference book, More doesn't take a "pro" position on open marriage, nor is it a cautionary tale, although it won't escape readers' notice that nonmonogamy corresponds with an uptick in Winter's migraines and crying jags. On several occasions, readers may be a step ahead of her ("What if I'm just doing what Stewart and Karl want me to do?"), but they'll be rooting for Winter as she and Stewart navigate the multiplicity of interpersonal dramas coinciding with a multiplicity of sex partners, one hotel room at a time. --Nell Beram, author and freelance writer