A Ticket to the Circus: A Memoir by Norris Church Mailer

(Random House, 416 pages, $26)

It’s an unusual book that can make you feel real affection for a pugnacious, willful man who is “flagrantly unfaithful” to his loyal and beautiful wife, said Martin Rubin in The Washington Times. But this one does. Norman Mailer apparently lucked out when he crossed paths with the woman who would become his sixth spouse, the future Norris Church Mailer. It was 1975. She was a 26-year-old divorced Arkansas art teacher. He was a potbellied 52-year-old passing through town because he had been asked to give a talk at a local college. Within hours, they were rolling on her living room floor; within five years, she had moved to New York to be with him, and she never left. Her forthright new memoir mostly conveys fondness for the man who would eventually break her heart, and that very fact tells us much about “the kind of person she is.”

Norris is truly a fascinating character, said Jennifer Senior in The New York Times. Sexually liberated but ultimately old-fashioned, she found her way into the elite world in which Norman dwelled by running the couple’s daily life “like a tidy ship.” The rewards were great: parties with Jackie O, Woody Allen, and the Ramones; adventures around the world. And her physical chemistry with Norman burned strong for years. When she discovered, at 42, that he was carrying on affairs with “an army” of other women, she was shocked. But apparently something in her “traditional Southern girl” background made her stay.

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Three years after Norman’s death, his widow admits there was a part of him she hated, said Judith Newman in O magazine. He had a habit of trying to spoil nights out, for instance, by whispering in her ear, “You’re losing your looks.” But Norris’ memoir also shows he could be a “sweet, intelligent, terrific, funny guy,” and that he never stopped being crazy about her. It’s hard to say she was wrong to stick with him, said Ariel Gonzalez in The Miami Herald. One can’t help concluding that Norris has lived “a full, regretless life,” at least according to her own account. “How many of us will be able to say the same?”