The rebellion of Yale Marratt

This book is an excellent read. I am very fussy with novels, and don't always finish them. With some, I simply havent the patience. But this one I read all the way through, in a matter of days, even taking it to work to read during my lunch break. The story in brief: Yale Marratt is born to a privileged east coast family; his father expects him to take over the family firm. But son Yale is not happy with that. At University, he acquires a girlfriend: the fact that she is jewish, raises disapproving eyebrows. A few years later, America gets involved in WWII. Yale is posted to Assam, in northern India. He meets a Red Cross nurse, whom he marries in a hindu ceremony. This causes conflict with his superior officer. War over, he and the new wife return home, where they buy a Georgian farmhouse. Subsequently, he learns that his former jewish girlfriend is now a widow. They get together, and the three of them live together in the farmhouse. Unfortunately, the authorities disapprove, and Yale finds himself in court, charged with bigamy. The story has an epic sweep, and would make a good movie. Are you listening, Hollywood? I don't know if the author himself was ever polygamous, but he seems to have researched the subject well. The blurb on the back states that the author was burned in effigy, when the novel was first released (1961), and the author condemned. But it is a very good read.

Yale Marratt is first of all a great book. But its social values are what make it significant. Vastly more significant than EYES WIDE SHUT.

I guess it was all downhill after this, Rimmer's freshman effort. He was a real novelist in this one, but drifted from there to manifesto writer for the Sexual Revolution in subsequent books. We didn't so much gain an activist as we lost a storyteller. In this book, the naiive son of a rich industrialist goes to college, meets a Jewish girl and falls for her (in the "Love Story" mode, only this book predates that one)--but then brings his girl home to Daddy, and all hell breaks loose. Boy loses girl, later joins Army and marries Red Cross volunteer while overseas. Transfers and the general upheaval of WW II separate them, they lose track of each other, boy comes home and rekindles old flame with college sweetheart. But he's really still married to his war bride, and SHE comes back into his life. What a dilemma! If there wasn't so much of a radical "free love" aspect to it, you'd have a classic Cary Grant flick up to this point. Our Hero loves both his ladies--can they accept each other? And that's BEFORE legality comes into the picture. I think Rimmer meant this as a challenge to the assumption that monogamy is the only way, but this story really comes across as a classic triangle love story with an ironic twist-- they're ALL sympathetic characters, NONE of the three is the soap-opera "homewrecker", they get all sorts of grief from outsiders, NOT each other--it's not "you and me against the world"--more like "you and you and me against the world".

The Rebellion of Yale Marratt is the first novel that Bob Rimmer wrote - though not the first one published; That Girl From Boston reached print earlier. It has the feel of a book that draws heavily on the writer's personal experiences - and, as the short autobiography published many years later in the 25th Anniversary Edition of The Harrad Experiment made clear, it does.Like Bob's other books, it covers non-monogamous loving - in this case, how to make a menage a trois work. But the strongest parts of Yale Marratt lie elsewhere; the texture of college life, of getting around the Army, of village life in India. Unlike some of Rimmer's books, this is one you will read for the story, not in spite of it.