Home Books Foreverland: On the Divine Tedium of Marriage

Foreverland: On the Divine Tedium of Marriage

Foreverland: On the Divine Tedium of Marriage

by Heather Havrilesky

Ecco ·2022 ·304 pages
Bottom of the Pile
Bottom of the Pile
I Index
23/99
Maybe Someday

39/99

Critics' Rating Index

Bottom of the Pile

7/99

Readers' Rating Index

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Scholars' Citation Index

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About This Book

An illuminating, poignant, and savagely funny examination of modern marriage from Ask Polly advice columnist Heather Havrilesky If falling in love is the peak of human experience, then marriage is the slow descent down that mountain, on a trail built from conflict, compromise, and nagging doubts. Considering the limited economic advantages to marriage, the deluge of other mate options a swipe away, and the fact that almost half of all marriages in the United States end in divorce anyway, why do so many of us still chain ourselves to one human being for life? In Foreverland, Heather Havrilesky illustrates the delights, aggravations, and sublime calamities of her marriage over the span of fifteen years, charting an unpredictable course from meeting her one true love to slowly learning just how much energy is required to keep that love aflame. This refreshingly honest portrait of a marriage reveals that our relationships are not simply "happy" or "unhappy," but something much murkier--at once unsavory, taxing, and deeply satisfying. With tales of fumbled proposals, harrowing suburban migrations, external temptations, and the bewildering insults of growing older, Foreverland is a work of rare candor and insight. Havrilesky traces a path from daydreaming about forever for the first time to understanding what a tedious, glorious drag forever can be.


Reviews

"This isn't clutch-my-pearls moralizing; this is manners ..."

Joanne Kaufman· The Wall Street Journal Read review ↗ Maybe Someday

"She needn't have worried."

Ann Levin· Associated Press Read review ↗ Top of the Pile

"The truth is much more interesting."

Hadas Thier· Jacobin Read review ↗ Top of the Pile

"An engaging, candid, relatable memoir of love and marriage."

Kirkus Read review ↗ Near the Top

"Reading Foreverland is good practice in learning to love a person who can be difficult and demanding."

Becca Rothfeld· The New Yorker Read review ↗ Near the Top

"This is the pleasure of reading her."

JOHN WARNER· Chicago Tribune Read review ↗ Top of the Pile

"That the author has made her particular disgusts...the basis for a general treatise on matrimony is the abiding problem of Foreverland."

Walter Kirn· The New York Times Read review ↗ Maybe Someday

"While she writes movingly about her love for her husband, Bill, more poignant are her darkly funny ruminations on the way that 'the world's most impossible endurance challenge' can put even the strongest relationships on trial ..."

Publishers Weekly Read review ↗ Top of the Pile

"Most of all, it is a state not to be taken for granted."

Carol Haggas· Booklist Read review ↗ Top of the Pile

"What doesn't: At times, this same wit can seem acerbic, or worse, whiny."

Alexis Burling· San Francisco Chronicle Read review ↗ Near the Top

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