Marital Assets demonstrates that there remain subtle ways to have a love affair. Its theme is passion, a theme dramatized through an unlikely protagonist: a man full of heat but a constricted emotional vocabulary.
Two couples of the American leisure class meet on holiday. The Merediths have visited this particular Caribbean club for years. A schedule change places Charles Meredith, a New York estate lawyer, and his wife on the same golf green as the Abbotts. Through her family, Claudia Abbott has inherited considerable wealth. Claudia considers challenging the terms of the trust, and Charles Meredith counsels her on her predicament, first on the beach and later in Aspen, where the couples have planned a reunion.
In Aspen, they expand their group to five, and the circles of love and resentment pile up like quoits. As Charles, a man of lyric but thwarted sensibilities, helps Claudia to resolve her dilemma, his confronts his own.
While the plot carries Ducker’s fourth novel, point of view remains a principal concern. The narrative emerges from slightly refracted angles—diary entries and the viewpoint of the novelist. This double vision reveals Charles Meredith as an unreliable but sympathetic diarist. The effect is powerful, and reinforces the critics’ praise of Ducker’s earlier fiction: “In its sophistication, moral complexity, and worldwide sadness, readers may be reminded of Marquand and Auchincloss.”
