Here Lies My Heart: Essays on Why We Marry, Why We Don't, and What We Find There

by Amy Bloom (Foreword), Catherine Jhee (Editor), Deborah Chasman (Editor)

This book is for the once, never, and much married. For believers and skeptics, love's fools and love's thieves. It is for people with long memories and long histories and for people who reinvent themselves in every new town, new decade, new relationship. This book is for everyone whose heart lies where it should, where it shouldn't, and, in the end, where it must. -Amy Bloom, from the Foreword

In these intensely personal essays, contemporary writers probe their experiences in and thoughts about one of our most enduring social and cultural institutions. Husbands and wives celebrate marriages that work, mourn those that don't, and write frankly about adultery. Includes essays by Mark Doty, Gerald Early, Barbara Ehrenreich, Cynthia Heimel, Vivian Gornick, Phillip Lopate, Nancy Mairs, and David Mamet.

Genres: Nonfiction, Essays, Memoir, Short Stories, Relationships, Love

223 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 1999

About the author

Amy Bloom is the New York Times bestselling author of White Houses; Come to Me, a National Book Award finalist; A Blind Man Can See How Much I Love You, a National Book Critics Circle Award finalist; Love Invents Us; Normal; Away; Where the God of Love Hangs Out; and Lucky Us. Her stories have appeared in The Best American Short Stories, O. Henry Prize Short Stories, The Scribner Anthology of Contemporary Short Fiction, and many other anthologies. She has written for The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic Monthly, Vogue, O: The Oprah Magazine, Slate, Tin House, and Salon, among other publications, and has won a National Magazine Award.

Reviews

[Meghan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautiful collection of essays with a good range of perspectives (for 1999, maybe not for 2019) on long-term love. For me, the standouts were: Mark Doty's "An Exile's Psalm," Vivian Gornick's "On Living Alone," Louise Desalvo's "Adultery," and Edward Hoagland's "Strange Perfume." Introduced me to a number of writers I wasn't familiar with, and I'm looking forward to reading more from them.

[Katie · Rating 3 out of 5]

This collection promises essays on "why we marry" and "why we don't." Unfortunately, this is a little misleading. There are plenty of essays about why people married, and quite a few about why they cheated or why they got divorced...but only one writer really chooses not to marry at all. And that essay is, even more unfortunately, one of the worst of the bunch.

Though I'm still looking for those elusive "why we don't" essays, there were some wonderful pieces in this book. Some stand-outs: Mark Doty's elegaic essay for his gay partner, which was as much about the act of writing as it was about relationships; Lynn Darling's piece, the most honest, realistic, and relatable view of marriage in the book; and Philip Lopate's hilarious insight into marriage counseling.

There are some stinkers as well, including the title essay. But for a book published in the 90's, when Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell were still shockingly unwed, this book was a step in the right direction.

[Kater Cheek · Rating 3 out of 5]

This started out being the perfect book for peeking into candid, graphic depictions of other people's marital lives. It's like listening to your friends dish on what's really happening at home, except pithy, and with more adjectives and metaphors.

The essay authors have a varied range, from the never-married to the may-someday-be-married, from the faithful to the cheaters, both genders and all orientations. Since they're all written by writers, the subjects seem a little more neurotic than average, but also more educated and eloquent. Some of them went on a bit longer than I wanted, in that pedantic way that lapses into dreary, but I only skipped one of the essays, which is below average for me and anthologies.

If you want to know how other people stay married (or don't) and what challenges they overcome (or don't) but aren't willing to read 20+ women's fiction novels, this is a good shortcut.

[Alice Urchin · Rating 4 out of 5]

My favorites in the bunch: "Serial Lover" by Rebecca Walker and "For Better and Worse" by Lynn Darling. I'd say that this book was worth reading, not just because it provides numerous varying perspectives on marriage and monogamy but because it led me to buy five more books by writers I'd previously never heard of. My main criticisms are that a few of the essays promote gender stereotyping and hetero-centrism a bit more than I'm comfortable with, but there were many essays by feminists and two by out homosexuals, so it sort of balanced out in the end.

[Ky · Rating 1 out of 5]

I though this would be an interesting collection of stories about the complexities of love. Instead I mostly just got a bunch of stories about straight monogamous people cheating on each other. Some of the pages were good for blackout poetry.

[Beverly Kennett · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this book shortly after my second divorce as a form of therapy. I liked the realness of the stories. The authors all had different experiences with love and marriage and even divorce, yet the underlying theme points to the way everyone struggles with their choices. The stories don't offer any magical answers, they just show the uncertainty of all relationships and how people will continue to make choices about marriage, just as we make choices about all aspects of our lives. Sometimes they will be good choices, sometimes bad. Sometimes, we have control over the outcome and sometimes we won't. It is all just a part of our journeys.

[Kristen Northrup · Rating 3 out of 5]

Picked this up because I recognized several names and it's an interesting topic. As others have said, though, it's not well-balanced. Either needed more from the unmarried or a different subtitle. The first half dozen or so pieces seemed too short and/or disjointed to accomplish anything, which is odd when you discover that they were deliberately chosen for re-publication here rather than being commissioned new and done half-heartedly. But the collection improved from there. And as the editor said, the final piece by Lynn Darling is stunning.

[Gina R. Evers · Rating 3 out of 5]

There are some big-name writers included in this collection: Amy Bloom, Barbara Ehrenreich, Vivian Gornick, David Mamet. I was surprised that many of the essays were abstract or occasionally meandering. Even so, many themes that intersect relationships of love -- personal growth, independence, monogomy, faith, ritual -- are represented here, answering the implicit question: what's at stake in a marriage? Mark Doty also offers a lovely essay on writing grief.

[Tara · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good range of perspectives in this collection of essays, including an argument for infidelity as a marriage boost. Several pieces just a few pages long. I related to a lot of it, found some of it kind of heartbreaking, and the rest intriguing in a baffling way. It was the first whole book I managed to read after Felix was born.

[Antonio Garcia-Martinez · Rating 4 out of 5]

Full disclosure: the (pregnant) girlfriend with whom ongoing wedding negotiations are in process essentially pilfered this book and has not been able to put it down (which is saying something).

Some of the essays are stellar, some are merely amusing (think the 'Lives' piece on the back page of the NYT Sunday Magazine). None are crap. Worth reading if you're making the conjugal plunge.

[Tori · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting book that I read for my Sociology of Love class. Probably worthwhile to go back and read again now that I've grown a bit in the relationship department and am examining my own feelings about marriage.

[Linda · Rating 4 out of 5]

Essays on Why We Marry, Why We Don't and What We Find There. I like it, though some of the authors seemed to me young and idealistic. I like the essays by authors I have previously read: Mark Doty, Lewis Buzbee. Eagerly awaiting the Willie Morris and David Mamet essays in the book.

[Melissa · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some essays in this collection were very good but I agree that it wasn't balanced. There weren't many essays by those who've chosen to not marry and too many on affairs. Still an interesting look at how others perceive marriage.

[Roxani]

One of the last books I read, near the end of this calendar year and my first year of marriage. So many soulful truths in here, so many nods of recognition in these essays. A gift from a beloved friend.

[Donna Kirk · Rating 5 out of 5]

read for class a few years ago.

[Katie]

Anthology of essays; introduction by Amy Bloom (author of "Away")

[Irene · Rating 2 out of 5]

Some of the stories were so "literary" in such a pretentious manner that the stories revealed nothing at all about the state of marriage (or divorce).

This one's not a keeper.

[Sue · Rating 3 out of 5]

A mixed but interesting collection of essays on marriage, its pluses and minuses. I'm filing this under "memoirs," since the essays are all mostly personal.

[Victoria Tirrel · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nice essays but only the foreward is by Amy Bloom, who I was following when I bought it. I think that disappointment colored my read.

[Karen · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was another book recommended by a professor as I was going through a divorce and finishing school. The stories are good; some are insightful. I enjoyed reading this, although I had to do so in smaller chunks.

[Mary Stapp]

This is an interesting collection of well-written essays, including one by my husband which I hated. There is a lot of insight, however, in others’ travails. My favorite favorite sentence in the book was written by Gerald Early in the essay titled “Monogamy and Its Perils”: “Marriage, in its barbarous civility, in its impossible dependence and impossible expectation, assures one that in the vast meaninglessness of the world, one can, only through the most monumental and absurd of accidental unions, hope to find the true rudder of meaning, at last.”
I would emphasize the word “hope.”