Uncommon Arrangements by Katie Roiphe

Ms. Roiphe has a degree in English from Princeton University and is a marvelous writer. Her topic in Uncommon Arrangements is the complex living arrangements certain famous married couples had during the period between the two world wars. They include H.G. Wells and Katherine Mansfield and other writers of the era. Most of the subjects kept diaries and engaged in voluminous correspondence that provides remarkable insight into their characters and love lives. Some were able to reconcile spouse and lover and to live (and or socialize) as a threesome. Some kept a heterosexual spouse and a homosexual lover. They all start as free-thinkers determined to live in their own ways, but from time to time an underlying Victorianism breaks through. Human arrangements are always human and therefore imperfect.