The Intermission

May 14, 2018
This entertaining marriage saga from Friedland (Love and Miss Communication) unravels the minutiae of everyday life in a broken marriage. It takes five years for the charm to fade from Cass Coyne’s marriage. Generally insecure and daunted by the prospect of becoming a mother, Cass informs her husband that they’ll be taking a six-month “intermission” and live seperately. While Cass has relished the stability, luxury, and love she’s found with hedge fund analyst Jonathan, she can’t quite move past her impoverished and neglected childhood or the guilt of secretly orchestrating her initial meeting with Jonathan. Told from both Cass’s and Jonathan’s perspectives, the story follows Cass as she leaves her posh New York apartment and begins an affair with a manipulative Hollywood producer in L.A. In Cass’s absence, Jonathan reaches out to his high school sweetheart and attempts to reconcile a disturbing indiscretion from his prep school past. Told in direct prose, Friedland’s emotionally fraught narrative shows how seemingly insignificant events inform and hide the “deep, dark truths... that reveal weaknesses in the fibers” in the Coynes’ relationship. In the end, their intermission might have to be permanent. Although the characters are frustratingly feckless and the ending is too abrupt, Friedland insightfully dissects motives, lies, and love in this engrossing deconstruction of a bad marriage. Agent: Stefanie Lieberman, Janklow & Nesbit Assoc.

May 1, 2018
A couple puts their marriage on hold for six months to find out if they're better together or apart.From the outside, Jonathan and Cass Coyne seem like the perfect couple. He makes tons of money working at a hedge fund, and she works in theater marketing. Two beautiful, successful people about to start their own family...what could be wrong? But when Cass' boss dies and she leaves her job, she begins to have trouble sleeping. As she tosses and turns each night, she starts to suspect that her marriage isn't as perfect as she's always pretended it is. Cass spent her childhood in poverty with neglectful parents, and she resents Jonathan and his snobby family for their wealth. And although Jonathan is still deeply infatuated with Cass, her behavior has started to grate on his nerves--for example, the way she feels guilty about hiring a housekeeper. Minor annoyances aside, Jonathan is shocked when Cass suggests a six month separation--or, in theater lingo, an intermission. For those six months, Jonathan will stay in New York and Cass will be in Los Angeles. They'll live their lives as if they're single, free to date other people, and when the six months are up, they'll decide if they want to stay married. While they're apart, crises occur (Cass' mother gets sick, Jonathan's company has a scandal) that make each of them realize why they need the other. Eventually, Cass and Jonathan must decide what's more important--a "perfect" marriage in which no one is honest or being truly open and vulnerable in front of the person you love. The resolution feels a bit rushed, and Cass' and Jonathan's decisions are sometimes so frustrating that it's hard to understand why they're together. Still, Friedland (Love and Miss Communication, 2015) paints a picture of a complex marriage between two flawed human beings.A multifaceted look at the difficulties and rewards of marriage.

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