The Beauty of the Husband

Summary

Subtitled "A Fictional Essay in 29 Tangos," this genre-crossing work uses the structural rhythm of the tango as a framework to examine the slow collapse of a marriage—its lies, its beauty, and the stubborn desire to keep believing in the beloved. Carson weaves in the voice of Keats to ask what it means to value beauty even in bad faith, and the result is a formally dazzling and emotionally unsparing investigation of romantic illusion. She was the first woman to win the T. S. Eliot Prize.