The book's style is not unusual or showy. Many short flashbacks and information-summary passages are sprinkled through it, but they blend smoothly into the overall narrative.

Each of the four main characters is shown at significant points in his or her own story. Occasionally the same episode is related twice, from two different points of view.

In structure, the tension builds to the point of Magda's death, about twothirds through the book. The last third follows Alice, Francis, and Hugo in its aftermath, with smaller turning points which help each to decide about new directions.

No other works come to mind as direct influences on this novel. The Good Husband is distinctly if quietly different from most literary treatments of death and of marriage. One work which contains some parallels is May Sarton's A Reckoning (1978). Like Godwin's novel, it is the story of an...