If It Was Easy, They'd Call the Whole Damn Thing a Honeymoon

PUBLISHERS WEEKLY AUG 22, 2011

In this mixed bag of essays, McCarthy (The Parent Trip: From High Heels and Parties to Highchairs and Potties), shares some of the arguments she's had with her husband of 13 years. After a particularly nasty one, she posts an online call for stories about the maddening things husbands do. Upon receiving a massive number of impassioned responses, she realizes there's a book, not a mere blog post, in the making. She writes that marriage is a "wholly unnatural state that's difficult at times but frequently has several bright spots and is occasionally better than the alternative." In service to that thesis, McCarthy's 20 essays veer from commiseration to hilarity to insanity and back again. Readers who are, or have been, coupled will laugh (or cringe) as they recognize themselves in these pages, from her husband's "Male Pattern Blindness" (inability to find anything in the fridge) to her drama-laden pretravel preparations. She scatters throughout tales of husbandly hideousness, called "At Least You're Not Married to Him" to "remind us all how good we have it." While the author refers to statistics or studies here and there, her in-the-trenches tales are the real guts. Readers will likely find it very funny.