May Sarton

Crucial Conversations

"May Sarton's provocative novel is about a wife who has outgrown her husband, and after twenty-seven years of marriage decides that she has had enough. . . . she is altogether believable." —The Atlantic

Reed and Poppy Whitelaw's conventional and apparently serene life together is shattered when Poppy tells Reed that she has decided to leave him. In a series of encounters that follow the shock of this news, which affects not only Reed but also their children and friends—in particular Philip, who must learn why he is so invested in their marriage—Reed and Poppy struggle to make sense of their lives in this alien new terrain.

"May Sarton again has entered Marquand-Updike territory and fortunately for us has brought to this fictional region the viewpoint of a first-rate craftsman who happends to be a woman vitally interested in both art and life." —Boston Herald

"Produces insight for the reader into the modern dilemna of reedom versus marriage, self-realization versus service and duty and finally the Sisyphean problems of the person alone, living on the threshold of other lives. . . . I find Crucial Conversations moving. . . . May Sarton has dealt with every aspect of female existence, with every kind of love. In this latest novel she has taken another, new step forward, and suggested a radical solution to the human-bondage-in-marriage status." —Doris Grumbach, New York Times Book Review