The Marriage Bed “Propelled by a consuming passion for character, language, and place… The Marriage Bed is mixed with lusty doses of religion, art and sexuality.”             -Elle magazine “Subtle and textured… explores the tides that bind and break in motherhood and marriage.”             -Dallas Morning News “An intense and dramatic story that calls out to the reader like the enchanting Irish Sea… Beautifully written and difficult to put down, this work will appeal to many readers- not just those interested in things Irish. It stands on its own as fine writing, and should bring McBride new readers.”             -Library Journal “McBride has created an eerie, compelling tale of pained love, in which the Irish settling is integral and never exotic.”             -Booklist “…haunting and otherworldly… the author has explored extraordinary depths in her depiction of human nature.”             -BookView Ireland

“Reading The Marriage Bed felt like reading one of the great classics: I was enraptured, transported, and fully aware of the fact that I was in the hands of a writer who really knows what she’s doing.”             -Elizabeth Berg “Regina McBride carries us across the sea and into her character’s lives with pure poetry. Any modern woman will recognize Deirdre’s journey to reconcile her past and present.”             -Jodi Picoult “… set in a mystical, misty Ireland, a place where ancient magic shimmers and ululates just below the thin patina of the modern; a place where, in the style of Niall Williams, strange things happen. [McBride’s] parents - second-generation New York Irish - always romanticized the land in which they had never set foot, and she, influenced by their passion, traveled to Ireland after finishing college, before returning to New York to work and write. At a guess, what she found in your actual Ireland could not efface the heightened reality of her exiled parents' distant dreaming.”             -The Guardian