September Songs: The Good News about Marriage in the Later Years by Maggie Scarf

From the Publisher

Since the beginning of the twentieth century, thirty years have been added to the normal human life expectancy. In September Songs, the follow-up to her bestselling Intimate Partners, Maggie Scarf investigates the surprising and profound evolution marriage has undergone in these "bonus years." In a series of intimate and provocative interviews, she delves into the lives of couples married for more than two decades and uncovers the welcome news that most couples are more satisfied in their marriages today than in their early years together. By giving voice to both their struggles and their triumphs, these husbands and wives reveal how they've balanced their emotional and physical needs with those of their partner's, and how the lessons they've learned over time have helped them find new opportunities to love, cherish, and live alongside each other in the extra years they have together.

The Washington Post - Judith Viorst

Scarf is good. A journalist and the author of several well-received nonfiction books including Intimate Partners and Unfinished Business, she is a probing but tactful questioner, an active listener and even, on occasion, a quasi-therapist. She enriches her material with research on aging and marriage and seeks insight into the marriages of her own interviewees by provocatively asking, "If you were going to give a title to a movie or a book about this time of your life, what do you think it would be?" The answers—"The New Beginning," "Harvest," "Peace" "Life in Bloom"—could convince the most cynical reader that "Grow old along with me!/The best is yet to be" is not a romantic's foolish dream but, for some fortunate couples, a real possibility.

The New York Times - Hilma Wolitzer

[Scarf's] a gifted and discreet interviewer, knowing what to ask and when to back off. Her gently probing questions—about retirement, health, sexual activity, finances, children, religion, disappointments and regret—lead her subjects to some unexpectedly candid answers. They speak with ease, separately and together (in what often seem like twin soliloquies), about their shared histories and their hopes for and concerns about the future.

Publishers Weekly

In this well-researched and eminently readable study, journalist Scarf (Intimate Partners) plunges into the lives of married people between the ages of 50 and 75, inquiring how their partnerships have changed, been renegotiated, reframed and refreshed as increased longevity has added up to three decades to the span of an average marriage. Conducting in-depth interviews with seven couples, the author poses perceptive and challenging questions to her subjects, asking how they have weathered difficulties, affairs, health problems, how they have "disappointed or surprised each other over time" and what are the "major sexual issues that emerge at this time of life." The results, though hardly surprising (financial worries, lack of sexual desire and compromise are all recurring themes), are nonetheless stimulating, not least because these couples are so open, a testament to Scarf's skills as an interviewer. Her case studies are interspersed with chunks of data and interpretations that lend welcome empirical backup to her claims and add authority to this fascinating overview of an unexplored topic that should appeal to couples of all ages. (Sept.)

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