Book Review: The Bedroom: An Everlasting Love Story
by Sonya Dunn
Publication Date: Oct 16, 2013
List Price: $9.95
Format: Paperback, 134 pages
Classification: Fiction
ISBN13: 9780615899619
Imprint: JEMH Publishing
Publisher: JEMH Publishing
Parent Company: JEMH Publishing
Read a Description of The Bedroom: An Everlasting Love Story
Book Reviewed by Robert Fleming
This slight paperback, inspired by the film, The Bedroom, packs several
truths of marriage and commitment into its revealing pages. The well-meaning
principals in this novel, William and Zorah Hughes, enter into their
relationship with all of the blissful joy of a Hallmark card, with a poetic,
hokey narrative to match. “She is there,” Sonya Dunn writes. “More beautiful
than visions of her in her dreams, there she stands.”
Holy matrimony! A man and a woman, taking the legal steps to connect their
lives, is sealed in partnership, when the lovesick hubby asks his beloved if
she will always promise to be his. That’s not a good sign. He wants
permanence, guarantees, iron-clad promises of loyalty. She promises him
everything he craves, but one must always read the fine print of life.
In a very short time, time creates a distance of the heart between the
couple. William can’t believe how much they have grown apart, becoming
strangers. Intimacy suffers between them. With a few strokes, Dunn expertly
depicts the emotional gap between the pair, and when Zorah says she hates
him, he believes she still loves him. The couple, proud parents of little
children, has had problems in conceiving another and the wife suffers
another miscarriage. She is devastated.
Following the loss of another baby, she becomes emotionally withdrawn and
pulls back from her man. Her transformation is not lost on William, for he
endures no coddling, no kisses, no eye contact. He realizes that this
situation may be beyond repair, so he turns to other women because of her
constant rejections. Some of the women want to replace his sullen wife.
Zorah discovers this secret life on his cellphone.
Outraged by his betrayal, his wife confronts him although he assures it is
only sex. His wife cries that she lost her baby six months but he counters
it had been over a year since they have been intimate. She wants to leave
but he is relentless. Although her anger softens, they make love but she
just lays there, lifeless. Her time with him will be dreadfully short due to
illness. Fate takes no prisoners.
Oh what a novel this would have been if the characters, situations and
dialogue had been fleshed out and extended! Still, this novel of love and
marriage points out life is often a difficult journey. There is much meat on
this fictional bone, but not enough to savor as a full meal.