If I had not wandered into the New York Opera thrift shop this fall, I probably would have never read “Memories of a Marriage” by Louis Begley. And that means that I might have never discovered Begley’s mesmerizing fiction.
A retired partner at Debevoise & Plimpton, Begley writes about New York’s moneyed class with stinging subtlety. Though he’s often been compared to Louis Auchincloss, another lawyer famed for novels about the privileged set, Begley is, in my opinion, a much more powerful, nuanced and literary writer. (Think Edith Wharton mixed with John Updike and a dash of Ian McEwan).
