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Title: Other Men's Daughters
Subtitle: A Novel
Author: Richard Stern
Narrator: Liisa Ivary
Format: Unabridged
Length: 7 hrs and 47 mins
Language: English
Release date: 01-06-15
Publisher: Audible Studios
Ratings: 4.5 of 5 out of 5 votes
Genres: Fiction, Literary
Publisher's Summary:
Harvard physiologist Robert Merriwether has four whip-smart children, an attractive and intelligent wife, and a successful, stimulating career. True, he and Sarah have not slept together in years, and when he decides to stay behind in Cambridge for the summer while the rest of the family vacations in Maine, his newfound freedom is deeply unsettling. But that does not mean that Merriwether wants to change his life or feels unloved.
To a man of science, desire is nothing more than a biological reaction. And Merriwether's personal philosophy is that once you're in your 40s, real love is nothing but lust and nostalgia. Then Cynthia Ryder walks into his life. Twenty years old, she is beautiful, intelligent, witty, and kind. And, to Merriwether's great surprise, she wants to be with him. Initially, he evades her advances, sure that hers is just a passing fancy. But as he gets to know her better, Merriwether realizes that Cynthia is more mature than he first suspected and that the joy he feels when they are together has been missing from his life for a long, long time.
When the summer ends and their need for each other does not fade, Merriwether realizes that he is being given a chance at true love. The question is, will he be brave enough to take it?
Considered by many critics to be Richard Stern's finest novel, Other Men's Daughters is a tender, honest, witty, and life-affirming portrait of a love as transcendent as it is unlikely.
Critic Reviews:
"A beautifully written novel that should be read by everyone who cares about the human condition." (The Philadelphia Inquirer)
Members Reviews:
Love, marriage, and the whole darn thing
This is a reprint of a novel originally published in 1973, although its themes and message remain timely and not dated.
Robert Merriweather, the latest scion of generations of New England Merriweathers, is a physiologist. At Harvard, so you know he's smart. His wife, Sarah, described as "a stocky little dynamo," has turned from a woman who would have sex with him in the same bed in which her roommate slept into a woman who won't have sex with him at all. She's become embittered, upset that her own intellect has been reduced to the status of "Wife of Robert Merriweather."
The Merriweather marriage is not a happy one.
When Cynthia, a winsome twenty-year-old, shows up for an appointment on a day that Robert is on call, she clearly is taken with a man over twice her age. She's a southerner; tan, blonde, and interested. She pursues him, and the two share a Summer of Love.
All summers eventually turn to fall, though, and in the world of literary archetypes, summer equates to the fullness of life, whereas in autumn, your life is winding down. Can Robert, now rejuvenated by the love and passion that Cynthia has brought to his life, extend his summer?
Richard Stern engages in a piercing examination of what it means to be married, whether to your spouse, your job, your children, or your lover. Literal and metaphorical marriages. Robert and Sarah have been married for over twenty years, and we are never quite sure what brought them together in the first place. Undoubtedly, Robert was attracted to Sarah's intellect. But once the rings were exchanged, he expected her to sublimate that very thing and turn her focus to motherhood and homemaking. Whatever connections they once shared have long since depleted.
