Sunday 4 August 2024

Book ~ "The Kept Man" (2007) Jami Attenberg

From Goodreads ~ Jarvis Miller's artist husband has been in a coma for six years. And so, Jarvis has spent these years suspended between hope and grief, paralyzed with longing for a life and a marriage that are slipping away. 

But then, unexpectedly, Jarvis makes her first new friends in years when she meets the Kept Man, three men whose lifestyles are funded by their successful wives, who gather once a week on laundry day. With their help, she reawakens to the city beyond her Brooklyn apartment, past the pitying eyes of her husband's art dealer and his irresponsible best friend as her future begins to take on the irresistible tingles of possibility for the first time in almost a decade. 

When a shocking discovery casts a different light on her idealized marriage, she's propelled even further down a path that she would never have dared to imagine just months before. 

Jarvis is married to Martin, who is an artist. He fell off a ladder six years ago and has been in a coma on life support ever since. Jarvis visits Martin every Wednesday and sells off his paintings when she needs money but has basically stopped living. When her washing machine breaks down, she heads to the laundromat. There she meets three men who call themselves the Kept Man Club (their wives are the breadwinners) and meet there every Tuesday. Because she hasn't got much else going on in her life, Jarvis starts to join them. When Jarvis discovers Martin's secret, it changes her outlook on her life.

I've read a couple books by this author and I wasn't crazy about it. It's a dreary story and the writing reflects this. There are no likeable characters and it's written in first person perspective in Jarvis' voice. As a head's up, there is swearing and adult activity.

It did prompt a discussion between Gord and I as to how long we would keep each other on life support with no hope of recovery if something ever happened. We both agreed that six years was too long and maybe a couple of months was more reasonable.

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