Marriage is a foreign land. Those who visit are always altered, often disoriented, and occasionally shattered by the experience. Here is a bulletin from the frontline, fresh and vivid, that provides some kind of map to this difficult terrain.
Many men, bedded down firmly into the wedded state, find themselves in a curiously cosy emotional paralysis - this book describes that paralysis, and the married man's inability to act. It pulls back the curtain on his desires and discontents and puts before us the naked ape in all his brute impulses. The reader will marvel at the excruciating psychological accuracy and emotional candour displayed here. This is a book to make every married man squirm with recognition and every wife shiver with deeper understanding of her mate's erratic behaviour.
'The Country of Marriage' is by turns illuminating, disturbing and beautiful, but you will depart it glad to have visited, and glad to have encountered Giardina's singular skills for the first time.
