More often than we might care to admit, we enter marriage or other committed relationships with more haste than reflection; we move forward without clearly thinking things through or fully imagining what a future with this partner might look like given what we know (or sense) about them and ourselves.
In her painfully honest, witty, and perceptive new novel, And So We Die, Having First Slept, Jennifer Spiegel acknowledges this reality without judgment, and without suggesting that such relationships are necessarily doomed. Instead, through the struggles of the married couple at the center of the novel, Spiegel makes the case that it’s never too late to confront the most difficult truths about our partners and ourselves, which offers at least the hope of transformation or redemption—something denial never does.
As the novel opens, we learn that the central character, Brett, will soon be marrying a man, Cash, she’s only just met. “She would get to know him after they married,” Spiegel writes. In explaining the reason for the marriage to friends “who thought her nuts,” Brett says, “I just believe it’s right.”
What Brett doesn’t know at the start of the relationship with Cash, and what she discovers through numerous trials in their marriage, is that he is seriously—and perhaps irretrievably—addicted to drugs.
Meanwhile, Brett is coping with problems of her own. For one thing, a brain injury that she suffered before her marriage to Cash has taken a lasting physical, emotional, and psychological toll. Also, Brett is still haunted by a relationship she had with a would-be intellectual and pretty boy, Miller, back in college:
Brett believes that Miller broke up with her because she was “on the verge of beauty, but not beautiful.” But Miller cited her “archaic Christian religious beliefs”:
In Cash, Brett finds a fellow Christian, but the two of them seem to have little else in common. Though Brett and Cash marry, have two children, and try to forge ahead as a family, they often seem more like ill-matched housemates than spouses who feel at least a tenuous connection of love or devotion. By the seventh year of the marriage, things have reached a low point, with Cash holing himself up in the bathroom or study at night, and no longer sharing the marital bed.
It turns out that Cash has been making meth in the bathroom, and when this starts a fire that leads to an intervention by Child Protective Services, Brett and Cash decide to separate, and Cash goes into recovery. The marriage feels close to ending, perhaps for the best of all concerned—but it doesn’t. In fact, the trials surrounding Cash’s addiction and recovery, and Brett’s efforts to figure out what she wants and needs for herself at this trying time, form a sort of crucible that transforms both characters and how they relate to each other. Spiegel’s writing about this transformation offers a thought-provoking deep dive into what aspects of a relationship might be mended, nudged into fruition, or best left behind. And it invites deeper reflection on what can be learned from struggle and failure in a marriage, even when the relationship ultimately ends.
As for Brett’s long-lost love, Miller, he reappears near the crisis point in her marriage. Having traveled to Brett’s now-hometown, Phoenix, on business, he meets her at a coffee shop, where they catch up on each other’s lives. In advance of their meeting, Brett had hoped that Miller would say, “I will always love you.” She does not want to have an affair with him; rather, she “wanted to be the beloved, not the lover.”
In reality, Miller disappoints Brett on this and other fronts, leading to this outburst from her:
Miller didn’t really hesitate. “What did you expect?”
This scene captures one of the core tensions in the novel, between the often-romanticized notions of lost or unrequited love and the mundane (and sometimes harsh) realities of actual love, or its approximation. Spiegel portrays this tension with honesty, wit, and humor.
The novel ends with these two lines:
Is it a story people want to hear?
Though the story of Brett and Cash may be difficult to hear (read), it delivers haunting insights into what might arise from the fire and ash of a struggling, or failing, relationship: a phoenix, perhaps—if the conditions are right.
Would My Pick be Your Pick?
If you're interested in ________, the answer may be "Yes":▪ Stories of lost love
▪ Stories about marital challenges or struggles
▪ Explorations of addiction and recovery
