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The Marriage of True Minds: Book summary and reviews of The Marriage of True Minds by Stephen Evans

The Marriage of True Minds

The Marriage of True Minds
by Stephen Evans
Published in USA May 2008,
192 pages.

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The Marriage of True Minds Summary

Together as husband and wife, Nick Ward and Lena Grant ran a successful boutique law firm in Minneapolis, vanquishing all their legal foes side by side. Then Nick's charmingly erratic behavior finally became too much for Lena. And so the marriage and the partnership ended.

But—like C. K. Dexter Haven and Tracy Lord—it seems that Lena and Nick just can't quite separate. Lena works out fiercely, keeps her dates with the boring and conventional Preston Winter, and daily battles on against corporate greed. But Nick's not doing so well.

Still brilliant and devilishly clever, he is now also almost crazy. He is prone to fantasy and the big gesture, and he engages frantically in guerrilla warfare for the sake of animals wild and domestic. Nick doesn't make plans; he has visions. And eventually his antics put him back into Lena's hands. While she tries to navigate the legal waters he's thrown them into, Nick veers out of her wake and into the midst of a simpatico set of companions, including Oscar, his psychiatric attendant and Marvel Comics collector; Ralph and Alice Wilson, the rebellious managers of the city animal shelter; and an aging Irish hound named Wolfram.

Often laugh-out-loud funny, with bright wit and machine-gun dialogue, The Marriage of True Minds sweetly explores modern love, undying idealism, some dedicated animal rescue, and one cracked partnership that can’t be sundered—from without or from within.

This book is published as a paperback original.

The Marriage of True Minds Reviews

"Evans demonstrates his playwright's mastery of dialogue and tension in his accomplished and whimsical first novel about love and the bizarre behavior it ignites." - Publishers Weekly.

"Poignant and outrageous, moving and profound, Evans' delectable debut novel thrums with zesty dialogue and a memorably zany cast of irresistable characters." - Booklist.

"Stephen Evans' first novel, The Marriage of True Minds, is a funny, poignant, oddly beautiful book about three divergent life forms - animals, people, and lawyers. You will love it if you read it with a true mind." - Kinky Friedman.

"I just finished spending some wonderful hours skipping along to the tale of two lawyers in The Marriage of True Minds . . . . The dialogue is fast-paced, funny, and with Nick, you often have to stop and say, 'hmmm, I get it.' The characters do things out-of-the ordinary, and it is so refreshing. It is a book that will entertain you and make you hope that Nick and Lena make another appearance in the near future." - Eileen Dengler, Executive Director, NAIBA (New Atlantic Independent Booksellers Association).

The information about The Marriage of True Minds shown above was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's online-magazine that keeps our members abreast of notable and high-profile books publishing in the coming weeks. In most cases, the reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author of this book and feel that the reviews shown do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, please send us a message with the mainstream media reviews that you would like to see added.

The Marriage of True Minds Reader Reviews

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Rated 3 of 5 of 5 by Anna
The Marriage of True Minds
I found this to be a quick and enjoyable, although not great, read. The characters are quirky and interesting -- some of the 'minor' characters really flesh the story out -- but it remains at heart a fairly simple love story. There are some interesting legal and psychological issues that could be explored in a book club setting but, for the most part, the book is more likely to be of interest to individuals rather than groups.

Rated 2 of 5 of 5 by Melissa
Make a great sitcom!
I really don’t like to give poor book reviews and frankly this isn’t really a poor storyline, it just would be a better screenplay than a novel. The novel does have a good message about animal adoption and no-kill shelters, though it took awhile to get to the message. The characters are very one-dimensional; at best we get a one line description of their clothing or a brief mention of their hairstyle, but not enough to be able to formulate a complete character picture. Some of the dialogues make no sense (i.e. Nick & Oscar at the lake) and while they are often incredibly witty, the comedic wit would be better suited for a visual performance than a novel. I would love to see some of Evans original works on film or stage!!

Rated 3 of 5 of 5 by Carolyn
So-so read
I really liked the premise of this book, so I was surprised when I didn't like the book itself. I love books with humor, but found things like the puppet just sort of stupid. The ideas were great, but this just wasn't for me.

Rated 5 of 5 of 5 by Donna
I laughed. I cried. I'll read it again.
Evans has created a perfectly limned representation of a flailing two-headed, multi-armed creature struggling to reign in the mercurial insanity of Nick Ward and Lena Grant’s relationship. They’re divorced, they’re ex-law partners, they’re still in love and their love has made them both more than a little crazy. None of that takes anything away from this witty, clever and charming little story. Indeed, it’s all the better because of the insanity.

Rated 4 of 5 of 5 by Ann
Is Nick Really Crazy?
This funny and touching novel will have you laughing one minute and questioning your definition of "crazy" the next. With witty dialogue and unforgettable characters including a puppet and a soon-to-be-euthanized wolfhound, Evans has crafted a book about a partnership that survives in spite of all odds. Animal lovers will especially be charmed by Nick's strategy in saving the animals in the shelter.

Rated 5 of 5 of 5 by Rachelle
Charming read
The Marriage of True Minds was a fantastic treat - filled with humor, quick-wit, and a hand puppet named Sancho there was plenty in this book to love. At just under 200 pages it was a quick read that showed that sometimes the definition of insanity is love.

...10 more reader reviews

A playwright, performer, and director, Stephen Evans is an established figure in the Baltimore-Washington theater world. The Marriage of True Minds is his first novel.

More about this book at the publisher's website.

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