Morality Tale - by Sylvia Brownrigg (Paperback)

About the Book

"Morality Tale" is a novel about the triangular complications of a modern marriage and the comedy that flows from them. When the elusive but exciting Richard (an envelope salesman with a nice layperson's line in Zen philosophies) meets this novel's narrator, he offers her a friendly escape from her own daunting domestic life.
Burdened by her husband's ongoing negotiations with his angry ex-wife, the strains of looking after two stepchildren, and the lingering ghost of her own past betrayals, she finds that the life of a "second marryer" leaves much to be desired.
As her friendship develops with Richard, so grows the shadow cast over her marriage by his presence, and when they make a late, illicit bay crossing together on a ferryboat, the story gathers momentum under California's Mount Tamalpais. There, in the fabled Golden State, Sylvia Brownrigg shows how even a layperson's Zen can lead to some important revelations about the need to look forward, not back.
Told with unwavering honesty and wit, "Morality Tale" explores what it means to be married a second time around--and the crucial universal truth that change is often the key to staying together.

Book Synopsis

When this novel's unnamed narrator meets the elusive but exciting Richard (an envelope salesman with a nice layman's line in Zen philosophies), he offers her a friendly escape from her dreary domestic life. Burdened by her husband's ongoing negotiations with his angry ex-wife, the strains of looking after two stepchildren, and the lingering ghost of her own past betrayals, she finds that the life of a "second marryer" leaves much to be desired. As their friendship develops, so grows the shadow cast over her marriage, and when they make a late, illicit bay crossing on a ferryboat, the story gathers momentum under California's Mount Tamalpais. There, in the fabled Golden State, Sylvia Brownrigg shows how even a layman's Zen can lead to some important revelations about the need to look forward, not back. Bristling with honesty and wit, Morality Tale explores the triangular complications that can befall a modern marriage and the tragicomic forces that surround them.

Review Quotes

"Refreshingly honest, winsomely self-deprecating, Brownrigg's glib yet contrite heroine evinces both a saucy innocence and tortured anguish."

About the Author

Sylvia Brownrigg is the author of a collection of stories, Ten Women Who Shook the World, and the novels Pages for You and The Metaphysical Touch. She has a degree in philosophy from Yale University and lives in Berkeley, California.