FOREVERLAND

The author and longtime New York Magazine “Ask Polly” advice columnist trains her incisive eye on her own marriage.

“I’m old and you’re old and nothing new is ever going to happen to us!” Havrilesky tells her husband, Bill, late in the book. “We’ll just get older and older and everything will stay exactly the same until we’re dead.” She shares this pessimistic and yet relatable sentiment after recounting a mild attempt at an extramarital flirtation that went awry, a development that was surprisingly crushing to her. The “tedium” in the subtitle is part of what fuels Havrilesky’s ambivalence toward the project of marriage—that and the fact that “even after years of careful training, a spouse will still do whatever a spouse feels like doing.” In Bill’s case that means making unappealing noises, interrupting, and wearing golf shirts, “perhaps the least attractive article of clothing available to humankind.” The author takes readers through the relationship chronologically, beginning with the honeymoon phase, in which she and Bill had copious amounts of sex and watched a lot of TV. Then it’s on to marriage and the births of their children, which prompted their questionable decision to move to the suburbs in order to avoid the “progressive elites” in their Los Angeles neighborhood. Alongside her chronicle, the author offers running commentary on how the marriage has adapted—or failed to adapt—to life’s vicissitudes. For her part, Havrilesky honestly serves up her own flaws for the reader’s perusal; for example, she describes herself as a “wise guru type who knows everything about everything…about as appealing a mate as Jabba the Hutt.” Meanwhile, Bill comes off quite well, though the author describes his annoying habits in perhaps too much detail. There are times when Havrilesky’s interest in writing ambitious prose or making a metaphor work get in the way of her narrative, but overall, this is a delightfully quirky memoir that refreshingly dissects the institution of marriage.

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