katebb's reviews
18 reviews

Perfection. I return and return to these. Read them aloud, find videos of them performed by the author, live inside them, write them in birthday cards...

I feel like this book was a good idea, poorly executed. 

Gosh, I love this book. From the first time I read it, the characters were fully alive and present to me, even as some of the plot remained obscure. It's a book that bears reading and rereading, deep consideration and reconsideration. The prose itself is lovely (the descriptions of food, smells, growing things, and skies are lyrical and irresistible); the complex narrative is propulsive, bewitching, and compelling; and the characters are undeniably, achingly human. At the center: what does it mean to live in community? What do we risk and what do we gain?

This book is a straight memoir of a real and (as I think the author herself is suggesting) unremarkable marriage. Havrilesky has a sharp wit, so there are funny lines and vignettes told with satisfying and amusing tension, but I didn't find it terribly compelling overall. This is not really my genre!

I don't know why, but I expected this to be more of an exploration of what keeps so many of us committed to the idea of marriage, how people (including but also beyond the author) find their way to remain and even revel in the "divine tedium," and what this "divine tedium" offers us or keeps from us. It is not that book. It is the story of Havrilesky's marriage, which (like any marriage) has its quirks--but on the whole, this is an expected tale of "first comes love, then comes marriage, then comes the baby in the baby carriage," plus a variety of digs at her husband in moments she is not particularly attracted to him, and digs at herself in moments she can't believe he could be attracted to her. 

Overdue at the library! Also, so many men.