At first I couldn't shake the feeling of having read something almost, but not exactly, like this. Eventually I tracked it down to Russo's "The Whore's Child" book having a short story that almost this book in miniature. I guess he expanded it to a book-length story...

This book is a good read, with two caveats. First, the wife doesn't seem to exist on this planet, but on some other planet where there are only perfect people. Maybe this is a deliberate choice by Russo, as after all the book is told from the husband's point of view, so maybe he simply can't see any flaws in her, but still, it's annoying and reduces the wife to a non-factor.

Second, it's a very thin fence between comedy and drama that you must balance on in a book of this kind. Stray too far to the comic side, and the drama loses its reality. Stray too far to the other side, and you can't laugh at the funny bits. There are plenty of books that do either one of those things. This book, however, achieves something quite unique: the funny bits aren't all that funny, and the (melo)dramatic bits aren't all that moving. It still sticks together, but this is definitely a lightweight book compared to Nobody's Fool and Empire Falls.