The Wedding of the Two-Headed Woman - by Alice Mattison (Paperback)

About the Book

From critically acclaimed author Mattison comes a lyrical and moving meditation on love, marriage, and identity.

From the Back Cover

For years, following an early first marriage, Daisy Andalusia remained single and enjoyed the company of men on her own terms, making the most of her independent life. Now in her fifties, she has remarried and settled into a quieter life in New Haven, Connecticut. She's committed to a job she loves: organizing the clutter of other people's lives. Her business soon leads her to a Yale project studying murders in small cities. While her husband, an inner-city landlord, objects to her new interest, Daisy finds herself being drawn more and more into the project and closer to its director, Gordon Skeetling.

When Daisy discovers an old tabloid article with the headline "Two-Headed Woman Weds Two Men: Doc Says She's Twins," she offers it as the subject for her theater group's improvisational play. Over eight transformative months, this headline will take on an increasing significance as Daisy questions whether she can truly be a part of anything -- a two-headed woman, a friendship, a marriage -- while discovering more about herself than she wants to know.

Review Quotes

"A quirky, original novel. Mattison's voice is intelligent, spare and without pretense." - Washington Post Book World
"Mattison wrote powerfully of friendship in her highly touted The Book Borrower. Here she turns up those same literary high beams... the results are equally absorbing." - Library Journal
"Mattison's writing gives the humdrum an edge we didn't know it possessed." - Los Angeles Times Book Review
"Mattison beautifully describes the arc of the affair, as Daisy slips from woman in charge to woman in need. In Daisy, she creates a complicated woman who shows us self-discovery is a never-ending journey." - Chicago Tribune
"By describing the world that exists between town and gown, Mattison makes New Haven memorable for something other than the extremes of blue-collar neighborhoods and Yale University. The confidential voice of this novel's complex main character draws readers into that world with an almost magnetic power." - Boston Herald