How to Stay Married
The Most Insane Love Story Ever Told
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- $17.99
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- $17.99
Publisher Description
Harrison Scott Key, winner of the Thurber Prize for American Humor, tells the shocking, “shot through with sharp humor” (The Washington Post), spiritually profound story of his journey through hell and back when infidelity threatens his marriage.
One gorgeous autumn day, Harrison discovers that his wife—the sweet, funny, loving mother of their three daughters, a woman “who’s spent just about every Sunday of her life in a church”—is having an affair with a family friend. This revelation propels the hysterical, heartbreaking events in How to Stay Married, casting our narrator onto “the factory floor of hell,” where his wife was now in love with a man who “wears cargo shorts, on purpose.” What will he do? Kick her out? Set fire to all her panties in the yard? Beat this man to death with a gardening implement? Ask God for help in winning her back?
Armed only with a sense of humor and a hunger for the truth, Harrison embarks on a hellish journey into his past, seeking answers to the riddles of faith and forgiveness. Through an absurd series of escalating confessions and betrayals, Harrison reckons with his failure to love his wife in the ways she needed most, resolves to fight for his family, and in a climax almost too ridiculous to be believed, finally learns that love is no joke. “A fiercely memorable account of marital devotion against all odds” (Publishers Weekly, starred review), How to Stay Married is a comic romp unlike any in contemporary literature, a wild ride through the hellscape of marriage and the mysteries of mercy.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this outstanding memoir about the near-end of his marriage, humorist Key (The World's Largest Man) brilliantly recounts the circumstances before, during, and after his wife's affair with their neighbor. The narrative primarily focuses on Key's struggles to forgive his wife, Lauren, for her infidelity, a process rooted in and complicated by his Christian faith: "I've needed miracles," he writes, "because my wife's affair sent me to hell." He skillfully intertwines cutting comedy ("Who knew this cargo-shorted Hobbit possessed such devotion to romance?" he quips about Lauren's lover) with heart-wrenching musings ("I wanted kinder truth, truth I could work with, or at least a courteous lie," when Lauren asks for a divorce) and explanations of the spiritual impact the experience has on him. Lauren shares her own perspective in a mid-book chapter, and while there's plenty of witty back-and-forth between the couple, the more substantial takeaway is that they're willing to listen to one another, ultimately attending therapy and deciding to stay together. Key's willingness to laugh at himself and share ownership of the couple's marital issues elevates this beyond a gossipy relationship memoir or scorched-earth screed. Instead, it's a fiercely memorable account of marital devotion against all odds.
