May 15, 2019
An unhappy couple walks into a bar.... "This would make a good play," one may think while reading Hornby's (Funny Girl, 2015, etc.) latest--if one doesn't know that it has already been dramatically produced for television. In addition to being a little book with 10 short chapters, State of the Union is also a 10-part series of 10-minute episodes with Rosamund Pike and Chris O'Dowd, to be released on SundanceTV the day before publication. Consisting almost entirely of witty repartee, the slim volume reads more like a script than a novel. In both the book and the series, Tom and Louise, a couple, meet at a pub across the street from their marriage counselor's office each week before their appointment. Each week he (an unemployed music critic) has a pint and works the Guardian's cryptic crossword and she (a gerontologist) has a glass of white wine. Once set up with their drinks, they banter either irritably or companionably about black-and-white films, Brexit, and their relationship. "It's a long and complicated road that has led us here. Don't you think?" says Louise. "Well. It depends which way you look at it. There's the long and complicated, and then there's...as the crow flies," says Tom. "Talk me through the route your crow flies," Louise says. "You slept with someone else, and here we are," says Tom. Though between Week 4 and Week 5, Tom moves out of the family home and into "a squat with three media studies students," he never goes so far as to buy his own copy of the newspaper, preferring to print the crossword off the website. Unlike another couple they often watch coming out of the appointment right before theirs, Tom and Louise have hope, right? Leaves you eager to watch the show. Wait--do you think that was the idea?
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June 17, 2019
Hornby (Funny Girl) deploys his characteristic wit in this acerbic depiction of a marriage in crisis, already adapted for television. Tom, an unemployed 44-year-old music critic, and his wife, Louise, a 40-year-old gerontologist, meet in a pub across the street from their weekly marriage counseling sessions. Louise recently had an affair, and the two tussle over whether they even want to save their sexless, frustrating relationship. Although their pain and confusion pokes through, they disguise their emotions behind petty squabbles—such as their differing votes on Brexit and Tom’s antipathy for Call the Midwife—and playful banter, including discussing their imagined second marriages. Tom abruptly moves out of their house, setting up nearly absurd conversations in which Louise admits to telling their children a series of lies to cover his absence, and Tom is cagey about revealing his unpleasant living arrangements. Glimmers of their former closeness appear as they favorably and conspiratorially compare themselves to other clients of their therapist. The relative lack of non-dialogue text propels the immediacy and intensity as Tom and Louise teeter toward a hopeful conclusion. Readers who want an honest exploration of a relationship will be taken by the sprightly balance of difficult emotions and sarcastic humor.