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Published Feb 2011
256 pages
Genre: Biography/Memoir
Publication Information
In the tradition of Joan Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking, comes a poignant memoir about a marriage that was as deep and strong as it was mysterious and complex.
Upton and Sally Brady were a rare breed: cultivated and elegant, they lived a life of literary glamour and high expectations. Sally a debutante; Upton a classics major from Harvard, they met at the Boston Cotillion. He was articulate, witty, and worldly, and he danced like Fred Astaire. How could she resist? Despite raising four children on Upton’s modest wage as the editor-in-chief of the Atlantic Monthly Press, theirs was a world of champagne, sailboats, private islands, famous writers, family rituals, and ice-cold martinis. They lived life on their terms. But as time wore on, Upton, the charming and brilliant husband, the inventive, beguiling partner, grew opinionated, cranky, controlling, and dangerous.
When Upton died suddenly one evening in their Vermont cottage, Sally began uncovering secrets. As she went through his papers, she discovered that her husband of forty-six years had desired the love of other men. Her riveting, charismatic husband was not quite the man he appeared to be, and a year of mourning became for Sally a time to unravel the dark and unexpected web he had left behind. Hers is a moving and powerful story of coming to terms with what cannot be changed. It is also a story of great love.
"Readers will be captivated...her memoir is as searing and tender as the life she describes." - Publishers Weekly
"Brady’s engrossing chronicle of how she faced both the facts and mysteries of her husband’s concealed homosexuality offers generous and enlightening testimony to the true meaning of love." - Booklist
"Sally Brady's lively and candid memoir reminds us that long marriages are not always tranquil, and that sometimes their longevity both amazes and charms." - C. Michael Curtis, senior editor, The Atlantic Monthly
"A Box of Darkness can be appreciated for the beauty of the prose alone. Or for going on the wild ride that this marriage was, with its alternating heady romance and abject cruelty... . I loved this book." - Elizabeth Berg, New York Times bestselling author of Home Safe
"Sally Brady has written a tremendously affecting account not just of her marriage - at once painful, beautiful and profound - but also of a particularly evocative and important era in American letters. The writing is clear and simple and dazzling, and the story is impossible to put down." - Sebastian Junger, international best selling author of The Perfect Storm
"This remarkably candid exploration of straight-girl-marries-secretly-gay-man reveals the layers of frustration, adoration and joy layered into a 47-year marriage. Buy two copies - one for yourself and one for your best friend." - Leslie Morgan Steiner, author of the New York Times bestseller Crazy Love
"A Box of Darkness is passionate in its comprehension that the greatest of human loves is never only a romance novel but also, inevitably, a mystery play ..." - Gregory Maguire, author of Wicked
"Much like Jeannette Walls' The Glass Castle, this moving memoir is an absolute page-turner. Full of secrets and some tragedy, it also sings with glamour and romance. Ultimately, this is a story of love and redemption." - Laurie Horowitz, author of The Family Fortune
This information about A Box of Darkness was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Sally Ryder Brady, a writer, agent, teacher, and editor, is the author of a highly successful novel, Instar (1976), an illustrated book of adult humor called Sweet Memories, and two books of non-fiction, A Yankee Christmas, Volumes I and II.
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