Meredith Donnor is no longer searching for the man of her dreams. She married him six years earlier. But her romantic life has gotten off track. To avoid an uncomfortable subject, she and Greg are barely speaking - distractions at work, where Meredith teaches first grade, are not helping - and Meredith’s penchant for over-thinking generates more anxiety than answers. She becomes increasingly frustrated as her hints to restart communication go unnoticed and Greg’s return gesture comes with its own set of problems.
When they finally escape to the “Tightening the Knot” marriage seminar, they believe there is more to laugh at than benefit from. But could humor provide the breakthrough this humorless situation needs?
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By Linda Welch
Oct 15, 2009
"Tightening the Knot - Part One" Tightening the Knot by Amanda Hamm is all about relationships: Meredith’s relationship with her husband Greg, her sibling, her in-laws, her friends and to a lesser degree her co-workers and students. We know from the book’s blurb that Greg and Meredith go to a Tightening the Knot seminar but they don’t arrive there until Chapter 22. Until then, have fun getting to know Meredith and a whole cast of characters complete with their little quirks. Meredith and Greg have been trying to have a baby for two years. When Meredith asks Greg to take a fertility test and he refuses, things start to go downhill. Meredith is at the point of signing papers to start divorce proceedings when she decides to give the marriage another chance. Being Meredith, she must be the instigator, the controlling force in the reconciliation, but she is so occupied with agonizing over Greg’s reaction to anything she might say she doesn’t get around to making that first move.... More > I remember one of those emails which went around years ago. After a date, a woman spends the rest of the night dissecting every aspect of the date and everything said. That woman surely is Meredith and being inside her mind and over-active imagination while she obsesses and agonizes is for me one of the best aspects of the story: She spent the entire ride to work neurotically obsessing over this simple phrase. Did he realize he hadn’t given her so much as a “goodbye” in the morning for quite some time? Was that why he said it? Could there be even the slightest chance that he also wanted to prove they didn’t need his mother in the room to have a conversation? Then again, “Have a nice day” was hardly a conversation. It could have been a reflex. The odds of it having been a reflex actually seemed greater than the odds he had suffered over not saying anything the first time she left the house. How Meredith wished he had suffered over it. Not really suffered of course, but just agonized a little over it, like she would have. Meredith interacts with a pregnant friend who is a reminder of what Meredith herself wants but cannot have, another friend who wants nothing more than to get married and have babies and a mother-in-law who drops enormous hints about her desire for a grandchild. Add an escapee pet, annoying students and their cantankerous parents and other personalities to the mix and you have to admire Meredith’s outward appearance of cool while she inwardly deliberates ways to save her marriage. When the right words won’t come, Meredith resorts to other methods of letting Greg know she wants to heal the wound: When he noticed her brushing her teeth, he asked, “You’re going to bed now?” She nodded. They crawled under the covers facing opposite walls as usual. Then she moved an inch or two toward the middle and waited for him to notice. She fell asleep waiting and woke up seriously annoyed. A new box of cereal absorbed most of her wrath. It got a bit mangled as she opened it with significantly more vigor than was necessary, shooting Greg a few withering looks as though he might be responsible for making the box so uncooperative. He was accustomed to being more or less ignored over breakfast and the obvious hostility left him at a bit of a loss. “Is there…” he started. “I mean, did I do something recently?” Meredith was silent. She ate quickly and then finished getting ready for work. He tried one last quizzical look as she reached the door. She answered pointedly, “I went to bed early last night.” He looked unsure, but also hopeful. “Oh, so you’re just tired?” Meredith thinks Greg should automatically know what she wants him to do. Greg knows nothing of the sort.< Less
