Literary Wives Club: State of the Union by Nick Hornby

This was my third read for the Literary Wives online book club. The other members will also be posting their thoughts this week.

Kay at What Me Read

Lynn at Smoke & Mirrors

Naomi at Consumed by Ink

I first read State of the Union nearly three years ago (my original review). Nick Hornby is a reliable author for me; I’ve read almost his entire oeuvre now. This is an enjoyable novella that feels more like a screenplay – it basically is the script for the TV series – and is based around 10 dialogues between Tom and Louise, a couple meeting up at a pub for a drink before each marriage counselling session with Kenyon. Louise is an NHS gerontologist; Tom is an unemployed music journalist. When they stopped having sex, she had an affair. It was a short-lived thing, but it crushed Tom’s self-esteem and he moved out. The fact that one of them voted for Brexit and the other did not is an additional barrier. Though they have two children, we learn basically nothing about them. Tom and Louise talk about their relationship, but also everything else. They speculate about Kenyon’s other clients, and their own future.

The central question we ask about the books we read for Literary Wives is:

What does this book say about wives or about the experience of being a wife?

“How are new starts possible?” Louise says. “When you’ve been together for a long time, and you have kids, and you’ve spent years and years being irritated by the other person?”

I remember finding the book funny, though also on the nose, the first time I read it; this time it seemed more depressing. It could be something about the ebb and flow of all marriages, mine and the fictional one depicted.

What stood out to me most was that the main characters don’t appear to have much in common. They met at a party in their twenties and, when Louise asks if in an alternate life where they didn’t have a sexual connection (and thus, no kids together) they would be friends, they conclude that they wouldn’t. I’ve always thought that, at its heart, a marriage is a friendship. You should truly enjoy each other’s company and have at least a few common interests. Having other friends and separate hobbies is fine, of course, but for the one person you’re going to spend most of your time with to be very different from you strikes me as odd. Opposites attract is all well and good as a basis for lust, but not for a lasting partnership.

Tom and Louise are in danger of ‘staying together for the kids’ – is co-parenting all that’s keeping them together? – unless they rediscover a sexual spark. I’d forgotten the ending of the book. It seems like a fitting one for a TV miniseries and for a comic author.

My original rating (2019):

My rating now:

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Next book: His Only Wife by Peace Adzo Medie (March 2023)

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