I was really excited, after reading Rick Moody's fiction, to experience his writing via this memoir about his second marriage. I didn't form the same connection with it as I might have hoped, nor as I have with his novels. For a memoir, there was more justification/defensiveness than resonates with me, especially having read other memoirs about marriage between artists where the author holds their own feet to the fire a little more.

This book took me forever to pick up, and now I know why. I didn't enjoy it the least bit. I just felt like he was making excuses throughout the book. Run on sentences. It seems he didn't learn much about his previous marriage

Reading the blurb I thought the book would be about someone who went through serious issues in their marriage and recreated themselves and started off fresh with intentions of not screwing up again. But, it just seemed he wanted to just impress his second wife with what he wrote. Overall wasn't impressed with the writing or the book overall. Thank you to NetGalley and MacMillian for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

“A first marriage must end for a second marriage to begin “ according to author Rick Moody, as he shares the story of a new beginning (with his second wife Laurel Nakadate) in: “The Long Accomplishment: A Memoir of Struggle and Hope In Matrimony” (2019).

After a family holiday dinner, Moody and his (unnamed) first wife decided to end their marriage amicably, they had a young daughter, Hazel. Moody didn’t take his fatherhood responsibilities lightly, despite his complex marriage running out of steam. His mental health problems combined with their mutual agreement to have an open marriage certainly didn’t help. By the time attorneys entered the picture, the divorce settlement didn’t work out quite as he had anticipated—there were even questions concerning ownership of book copyrights he wrote during the marriage.

The life of a writer can be solitary and lonely, particularly during his first marriage when he wasn’t very honest with significant others that shared his love life. Although he doesn’t name names and understandably leaves many identifying details out—his writing is superb as he describes how disengaged he was from his own life. There were too many angry boyfriends, husbands and too much heartbreak along the way. One of his romantic partners said he was “evil” and would be the death of her. In his award winning memoir “The Black Veil” (2002) Moody wrote of a serious depressive episode that led to his psychiatric hospitalization. To make matters worse, the death of his 37 year old sister followed from a rare seizure disorder.

It was unclear why he and Nakadate went through such a formal wedding process and reception when they both seemed fine with marrying without fanfare at the local courthouse. Moody, older and wiser, sought therapy for his mental health problems, and apparently found the love and stability he needed to be a good husband and father. He is proud of his wife’s photography and artistic accomplishments and abilities. The book recall ‘s month by month their first year together, including longer passages of Nakadate’s IVF treatments. This may interest some readers or not. Moody wrote of his famous friends, a cursed postcard (signed by Charles Manson), aging parents, the literary life of travel, readings, preforming in a garage band, his writing instruction included teaching at NYU and Yale. There were difficult and traumatic events that he and Nakadate were forced to deal with, but together they managed well, the birth of their son sealed the deal. ** With thanks and appreciation to Henry Holt and Company via NetGalley for the DDC for the purpose of review.

I am glad I am not married to Rick Moody. I can't connect with him at all or care about his life or feelings. I did not like the writing style at all and despite what should have been interesting insight into marriage or relationships or life, I had to struggle to keep reading. Not every writer is good at memoir. He isn't.

Gorgeous sentences kept me engaged for the first half of the book. I did finish it, but I can't say I enjoyed it. I was in it for the writing itself, but in the end the sentences started to drag and I lost interest. I can imagine there's audience who will find solace in the details of Moody's difficult year, but that audience wasn't me.

"The Long Accomplishment" shares stories from the first year of marriage between author Rick Moody and visual artist Laurel Nakadate. The stories in this memoir cover topics like divorce, remarriage, miscarriage, infertility, family relationships, neighbors, mental health, suicide, and robbery.

Unfortunately, I could not get into this book at all. I didn't relate to any of the stories, didn't like the author's writing style and never connected emotionally to the author. As I read, I kept thinking that the book would be more suited as a story reserved for the author's children, not a wider audience. I did appreciate the author's views on addiction and his honesty about his past addictions and struggles.

Note: This book includes adult language and sexual content.

Thank you to Rick Moody, NetGalley, and Henry Holt & Company for providing an advanced copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Although not uninteresting material, this was difficult to get through due to the author's writing style. I am not a fan of overly idealistic soliloquys, nor of extremely long run-on sentences filled with seemingly unrelated phrases.

From the subtitle [A Memoir of Hope of Struggle in Matrimony], as well as the book blurb, I was expecting this to be an account of how the author learned from mistakes in his first marriage in order to make his second a success, despite overwhelming odds. I didn't pick up this theme in the novel. Moody does chronologically detail the hardships he and Laurel experienced, but did little to link it to any kind of overarching message or tone.

Nearly half the book passes before we get any sense of who Laurel is. It is difficult to be invested in the outcome of the titular marriage when we don't have any commitment to one of the parties.

Definitely an interesting read. I don't think it was my favorite ever. I thought it was choppy and felt like I was constantly having to jump around. Overall, I think the content was good but probably could've been organized differently.

Made it 20% of the way and could not get into it so I am giving up.

This is a really detailed account of the author’s relationships and personal life in general. It seems like the level of detail will make it off putting for a lot of people. Maybe that’s just me because I have no prior experience with the author.

There were some interesting bits but not enough to keep me reading.

Thanks to netgalley for the arc in exchange for for an honest review.

Towards the end of this beautiful memoir, Rick Moody goes on at some length about grace and all its implications. Much of this applies to his honest, generous account of the first year spent with his soul mate, his partner in every sense of the word, Laurel. This is a fine example of the difference evident when a professional writer produces such a memoir. No ghostwriting, lovely passages, heartfelt passions for the bad as well as the good. I would like to say that his respect and appreciation for his partner are evident on every page, and the trials they encountered during this "honeymoon year" are legion and their survival is thanks to the grace shown by both to one another and to the world at large.

This is a very detailed story about marriage and relationships. I tried to finish this book and I kept looking for reasons to like it but unfortunately, it’s not for me. Thanks to Netgalley and the publishers for this book in exchange for an honest review.

What a pleasure it has been to recently discover the writer Rick Moody, who makes it very hard for anyone to pigeonhole him into one art genre or another. It is even more difficult to write about what interests me most about him. Last week, for example, I spent an hour reading and browsing through his many articles collected in the Swinging Modern Sounds column that on a monthly basis he contributes to the online mag Rumpus. In his always-expanding music review collection there is an enormous amount of material and insight for anyone interested in musicians that for the most part remain off the beaten path. But what brought me first to Rick Moody was this publisher’s review copy of his latest book The Long Accomplishment: A Memoir of Struggle and Hope in Matrimony. Immediately, and right out of the box in his introduction, Moody confesses to being a long-time philanderer with one failed open marriage already on the books, and then he name-drops Amy Hempel as being one of his best friends. And that pretty much did it for me because of my long history with Gordon Lish and all our shared illicit dalliances, along with Lish’s own intimate accomplishments with Amy Hempel. Not that I have actually involved myself in committing serial adulterous acts, but I can certainly be rightly accused of promoting said actions and also somewhat complicit in arranging them. So my relationship with Rick Moody already is complicated without my ever meeting him.

"...My first wife seemed earnest and totally available, and she lived in Chicago, which was nowhere near where I lived in Brooklyn, and right from the start it was more of the same, for me, by which I mean both love and inconstancy, deceit and impulsiveness, failure at intimacy... "

It could be suggested that I might involve myself in extended experience with Moody’s writing before attempting to personally contact him, which is part of the reason I was perusing his many columns online in Rumpus last week. Later my wife and I spent a couple hours streaming YouTube videos of him reading from his books, and also videos of a few interviews with Moody as the primary subject. He was engaging, personable, and also a very good speaker.

"...Under no circumstance did it seem that monogamy was an impulse that I wanted to explore, and it was not that I didn’t love anyone with whom I was in a relationship at the time; more it seemed that I loved everyone, and could not bring myself to make a choice among them…"

This new memoir promised to be the "harrowing true story of the first year of his second marriage" but Moody did little in the beginning to prepare us for what might come. He did warn in his preface that at that time he was emerging from the wreckage of his past due to his being a recovering depressive alcoholic and sexual compulsive. But there was no proof through example and certainly no demonstration of it. Just his word, which is never enough for a discerning reader to buy into even if Moody is already held in good standing. Having never read any of Moody’s novels, but being aware of the adulterous film The Ice Storm that was based on his early book by the same title, I still was expecting in this memoir a few sordid details of his life leading up to his turning over a new leaf and dealing with life sober. This is not to minimize the publisher’s blurbed "stormy sea of external troubles—miscarriages, the deaths of friends, and robberies" to be recounted but this reader needed to be emotionally involved first with Moody. In other words, as I read his words there was no prior intimacy developed between us, and there could have been had he given more of himself first before recording this monthly raining of somewhat sentimental, though battering, personal hardships. But, in Moody’s defense, near the end of the memoir it became crystal clear the torments constantly attacking the start of their new relationship.

"...I was not sure I would be able to write anything else until I had attempted to render in words this our annus horribilis..".

And what a year it was. I do understood why he had to write it. What a mountain of misfortune, too much really, and I cannot imagine myself going through the number of events described in hard-to-stomach detail. But it is always a good sign when I begin taking notes and even writing a paragraph or two before finishing a book. Certainly, an argument could definitely be made for reading all of Moody’s work in chronological order before tackling, especially, a second memoir. Beginning at the beginning would have been the smarter way for me to go, and I would encourage new readers to Moody to follow my advice. But I was already all in with The Long Accomplishment: A Memoir of Struggle and Hope in Matrimony and determined to finish this long and painful ordeal. And by the end I did feel satisfied. Sort of happy even. Moody, in his genius, managed to completely buy me out. And I do feel more intimate with him now after his guts were spilled and managed to bloody my page. But life is good, as five of his previous books just arrived in my mailbox.

If the first year of my second marriage had unfolded as Rick Moody's did, I would have assumed The Fates were telling me I had made a terrible mistake. I won't spoil the tale by listing the events, but suffice it to say, if it could go wrong, it did. There was no self-pity in the telling of this story, however, and the author was honest and self-effacing in revealing what he viewed to be his "faults," which, in my opinion, may have been exactly the characteristics he needed to endure such a year. As I read, I found myself saying, " Do NOT tell me this is happening. You cannot be serious." Or, "Again? How in the world can this possibly be happening to you AGAIN?" Yet, Moody and his wife continued to put one foot in front of the other and deal head-on with a succession of events that would leave most of us reeling and in shock.. We should all be so fortunate to have that level of love and commitment in our relationships.

There were times in which I asked, "Why does this event need to be told? Why was this included in the story?" I knew, however, that all I had to do was continue reading, and the author would have me right back in the palm of his hand.

I didn't know until recently that Rick Moody is the author of "The Ice Storm," which was made into one of my favorite movies. I'm now following him on Goodreads, and will look into his other works. Thanks to NetGalley for allowing me to read "The Long Accomplishment" in exchange for an honest review.

Rick Moody has written a raw intimate emotional memoir his courtship his second marriage his relationship with hsi daughter.his real life.struggles .#netgalley.#henryholt&co,

Couldn't get into. Wanted to like this book.

Thanks to ,publisher and Netgalley for the chance to read this book. While I got the book for free,it had no bearing on the rating I gave it.

The most personal of Moody's work so far. Includes the minutia of his courtship and eventual 2nd marriage, plus his relationship with his daughter. Very detailed and emotional. Thanks!