SOURCE: "The Cure of the Married Therapists," in New York Times, October 17, 1993, p. 14.

In the following review, Janowitz finds Trouble a unique mix of humor and painful examinations of the unraveling of a marriage.

Not a great deal of really humorous fiction has been written in the latter half of the 20th century. Humorous or satirical fiction by men often involves the reader's identification with a bad boy—a drunkard, a lout, a glutton, a womanizer. The Ginger Man, Portnoy's Complaint, A Confederacy of Dunces most quickly come to mind. Of course there are exceptions, as there are to the generalization that humorous books by women often involve the reader's identification with the heroine as victim. After Claude, Fear of Flying, Kinflicks, The Dud Avocado—in these books, women are seduced and abandoned by various men, kicked out of hearth and home, and so forth.

Fay Weldon's latest...