His limitations as a playwright are even more evident in the second half of the evening: the tale of a longlasting marriage, carried from courtship through old age.

The court papers filed yesterday in State Supreme Court in Nassau County tell a bitter tale of a marriage that was troubled even before Mrs. Ostreicher became pregnant.

The opera has also been read as a feminist parable of the attempted breakdown of masculine barriers, and interpreted, misogynistically, as the tale of a marriage eroded by the wife's invasive behaviour.

A child shouldn't have to hear her parents' ragged, recriminating tales of a 15-year marriage collapsing in infidelity and shattered pride.

Partly an interracial buddy movie, partly the sentimental tale of a ruptured marriage, the film is largely a special-effects carnival full of machine-gun fire, roaring helicopters and an exploding tank.

Humor turns into a heart-stopping moment when Mr. Thomson tells a banal tale of a marriage gone wrong.

Bill Morrissey singing his song Birches, a poignant tale of a marriage and the tradeoffs we make in love.

Author of The Well of Dreams with a tale of a troubled marriage.

The answers to such questions, along with a more compelling narrative style, could have done much to illuminate this sad tale of a bad marriage and its mysteriously abrupt dissolution.

This is a very personal book - the tale of a marriage as much as the tale of a garden - and deeply moving.