One doesn't know whether to admire Vicki and Dennis Covington for writing Cleaving or to shudder and hide one's head in the sand. Written in alternating voices, this tag-team memoir draws a thorough portrait of one marriage, complete with decades' worth of adultery, drugs, alcoholism, abortion, and sin. In the Covingtons' case, these bohemian carryings-on come mixed with a goodly portion of old-time religion. After going sober, the couple settled down to raising daughters, attending church, doing good works, and writing books (they claim 7 between them, including Dennis's thoughtful Salvation on Sand Mountain, a finalist for the National Book Award). They even spearheaded a church mission to drill wells in Central America, a project which here yields not only life-giving water but also a rich flood of marital metaphor.
Yet their problems didn't go away. Charged with writing an inspirational book about marriage, the Covingtons found their own union once again in serious disarray. Rather than making themselves look good, they chose to tell the absolute truth about what had passed between them, and in the process they created this unusual memoir, an unflinching look at the forces that bind a couple together as well as those that rend them apart. After all, as Vicki points out, the word cleave--taken from the Biblical injunction for a man to leave his mother and father--can mean either to cling to or to divide, "as by a cutting blow." In their case, it meant both: "Love plays us like an accordion. Together, apart, together, apart..." People talk about honesty as if that were a literary virtue in itself. It's not, of course, but this excruciatingly honest memoir has many virtues of its own, including some lovely, unfussy writing and a steadfast refusal to look away when that would be the easiest thing to do. Whether all this spiritual soul-baring makes you feel compassionate or just queasy is, however, a matter of taste. --Mary Park
I've read all of Vicki Covington's novels and think she is a great writer. My book club really enjoyed BIRD OF PARADISE. And Dennis's book about snake-handling churches was fascinating so I read this story of a marriage hoping to find kindred people. I admire honesty but I was very disturbed by this couple and their obessions. I'm not a prude and I've always been a Christian( even though some youthful love affairs) but I don't understand raising two daughters and continuing in the way the Covingtons have. I also don't understand having an abortion because you can't tell who the father of the fetus is. Again I believe that abortion is very necessary but not for the reason Vicki gave. "What kind of marriage do you have?" was the question the wife of Vicki's lover asked and it's a valid question. We all have our definitions of marriage and we all lead lives that call for forgiveness but we're also called to repentance. I didn't see much of that in CLEAVING. Sometimes the honesty is too much.
writes,
Dennis and Vicki Covington are accomplished novelists, but in Cleaving they leave fiction behind to present a candid, revealing account of their marriage which has endured and survived alcoholism, mutual adultery, and antagonistic abortion. They spare neither themselves nor the reader from their lapses of faith, failures, betrayals, and addictions to alcohol and drugs. Cleaving is a mesmerizing biography, a lot like driving past a literary car wreck. Totally fascinating reading, and a testament to what the human spirit can cause, endure, and occasionally triumph over.
writes,
Since "Salvation on Sand Mountain," "Bird of Paradise," and "The Last Hotel for Women," are among my favorite recent books, I was surprised by how much I disliked "Cleaving." Another Covington fan warned me against reading the book, but I was curious, in the same way one cannot help but pick up those grocery store tabloids when one is waiting in a long line.
While the Covingtons repeatedly evidence dishonesty in their relationship, they insist that they must be honest in writing about their relationship. Why is honesty in writing valued so highly by the Covingtons when it was so easily dismissed in their relationship? And there is something self-congratulatory in their tone that made their revelations more characteristic of exaggerated fish stories than of honest personal reflection.
I can understand, perhaps, the value to the Covingtons of writing these experiences together and reviewing them together; I cannot see the value of publishing them. If you must read this book, for goodness sakes, check it out from the library. (Sorry, amazon.com.) This book isn't worth the money or aggravation.
