It would be very easy to name this book as a prime example of the axiom “Less is more.” But in this case, less is simply less. Sharon and Tom Curtis’s 1983 novel is a genie in a bottle – a complex, luscious story that remains earthbound and confined by its length.

Because the page count doesn’t provide much room for depth, the Curtises chose to tell only part of a story. When the reader opens the book, Jesse and Christine have overcome differences in social and economic background and been happily married for four years after overcoming differences in social and economic background. The couple is about to be reunited as Jesse returns from a six-month prison stint for taking a journalistic stand. But their marital bonds are severely tested as they attempt to navigate around the new person that Jesse has become.

There is much to respect, such as devastating dialogue accuracy and gems of descriptive prose. The circumstances of Jesse and Christine’s romance are quite unique, being neither girl-meets-boy nor second-chance-at-love; the book merely presents one stage in their marriage, and it is lovely to see how deeply and passionately in love they are.

This, however, has a drawback, because there is a lot of sex. None of it is salacious or extraneous, and it’s so ethereally described it doesn’t go past a Warm rating. But Jesse and Christine spend a lot of time contemplating it, remembering it, doing it, and not doing it. The scenes aren’t so much useless as irrelevant; the love scenes appear earlier and faster than the emotional development, and as such I felt little connection with Jesse and Christine.

Jesse and Christine are painted with deft but hasty brushstrokes, enough to provide a cursory overview of their characters and situations, but insufficient for true depth. The book feels like the condensed version of a grand, meaty, epic novel, and certainly contains enough material for double or even triple the page count. Within this volume we see retrospectives relating their respective backgrounds and their courtship, as well as present perspectives from Jesse and Christine, family scenes, conversations about Jesse’s time in prison, and the aforementioned love scenes. Together, these snapshots provide a photo essay; but I want a story.

Thus, while the book is beautifully, superbly written, I admire it much more than I like it, and as a whole I don’t think it succeeds. However, although it isn’t what I expected from my first full-length novel by Sharon and Tom Curtis, I am so intrigued by their utterly unique voice that I will certainly read more from them.