Amazing book, wonderful author | Dearly Beloved

book: Dearly Beloved | Anne Morrow Lindbergh

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	• Dearly Beloved Anne Morrow Lindbergh Chicago Review Press, 2003 - 208 pages average customer review:based on 2 reviews view larger image
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Holy Matrimony

Unlike any book I've ever read, this entire novel takes place within the space of a few hours as family members and wedding guests examine their own thoughts about marriage, love, relationships, families, children, and life itself while they witness the wedding of Sally and Mark. Beginning with Deborah, the mother of the bride, and ending with her father Theodore, all of the musings give the reader much to ponder as they consider their own life choices.

While I'd like to say this was a happy, uplifting book, I cannot; the subject matter was too deep and serious for that. At the same time, Lindbergh manages to cast a feeling of optimism throughout the chapters, especially when the grandfather talks about "the stream" and his love for Suzannah. Beatrice and Pierre give us hope that love can and does happen, Don fills the reader with disillusionment, and Frances makes us feel sad. For a serious book about marriage and all that it entails, this is a must.

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Amazing book, wonderful author

My introduction to Anne Morrow Lindbergh was through "Gift from the Sea," a life-changing classic that I treasure and give as gifts to friends every year.

"Dearly Beloved" is a meditation on marriage as well as a novel told by various characters attending a wedding. It takes place in one day, as the bride and groom and their families gather in the bride's home for the ceremony and reception. It is not sugar-coated. Here is a realistic view of the pains and pleasures of this complicated sacrament we call marriage. I couldn't put the book down and read it start to finish in one night. I sensed Lindbergh's own conflicts about her difficult marriage to her famous husband, plus her feminist philosophies glimmer throughout the stories and are remarkably ahead of their time. (This novel was written in the 1960s.) It was moving, sad, wise, inspiring, uplifting, infuriating and more -- like marriage itself -- and should be read by anyone who's newly engaged or even thinking about getting married.

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A June wedding sets the scene for Anne Morrow Lindbergh?s bestselling novel, Dearly Beloved. The ceremony is a great moment during which the ?gathered together? survey not just this couple, this occasion, but their own lives, hopes, and fears. As the family and guests follow the familiar marriage service, they are stirred to new insights?on love, on marriage, and on all the stages of development involved. For the young and eager bridesmaid and best man, marriage still lies ahead; but for the mothers of the bride and groom, and for friends and relatives, the sight of the young couple and the words of the minister evoke more troubling thoughts and deeper questions. Anne Morrow Lindbergh wisely chose the framework of a wedding as a meditation on togetherness to contrast the questions she contemplated on solitude in her bestselling classic Gift from the Sea. The novel's structure also gave her scope for her reflections?some of them autobiographical?and intuitions about the most crucial of human relationships, reflections she calls ?a theme and variations.? This classic book, first published in 1962 and long out of print, illuminates the truths behind marriage, not with easy optimism, but with perception, compassion, candor, and courage.

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