I would probably give The Marriage four stars if I hadn't read Ann Bannon's outstanding Beebo Brinker Chronicles, next to which this book kind of pales.
The most amazing thing about The Marriage is how much you feel for Page and Sunny, how you actually hope they can work out their situation, even though the last thing they should be is together.
Controversial to say the least, Ann Bannon's novel deals with what happens when two people in love (and married) discover they are actually brother and sister.
"We don't have to apologize for it, we have to do _something_ about it," Page yells at Sunny after his father drops the bombshell on them.
Page, once known as "Roger" to his birth parents, cannot deal with knowing his sister is also his wife. Sunny, his other half, wants to try and overcome everything so they can stay together. Complicated doesn't even begin to describe all the emotions, debates and heartache that goes on.
How Bannon manages to keep you reading despite the incest factor, how she keeps everything from becoming too melodramatic testify to her talent as a writer.
It makes me rather uncomfortable that she constantly compares incest to homosexuality, but I have to remember the time in which this novel was written and that Bannon is never less than compassionate in how she handles things.
There is understandable and intense discomfort on the part of those few who discover Page and Sunny are so closely related. But as Page's adoptive mother says to her her outraged husband: "It's your moral duty to mind your own affairs!"
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