How to Stay Married: The Most Insane Love Story Ever Told

by Harrison Scott Key

Overview

Notes From Your Bookseller

Laughing out loud at the collapse of a marriage? Quietly sobbing while witnessing the pain of being human and in relationship? This funny, touching memoir is a genuine spiritual and human excavation of the soul and the puzzle of love, belonging, and forgiveness.

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781668015506
Publisher:	Avid Reader Press / Simon & Schuster
Publication date:	06/13/2023
Pages:	320
Sales rank:	21,219
Product dimensions:	5.60(w) x 8.50(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

Harrison Scott Key is the author of The World’s Largest Man, winner of the Thurber Prize for American Humor, and Congratulations, Who Are You, Again?. Harrison’s TEDx talk about the challenges and rewards of creative ambition (“The Funny Thing About the American Dream”) is featured on TED.com, and his humor and nonfiction have appeared in The Best American Travel Writing, Oxford American, Outside, The New York Times, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, Bitter Southerner, Town & Country, The Mockingbird, Salon, Reader’s Digest, Image, Southern Living, Gulf Coast, Creative Nonfiction, and elsewhere. He has spoken and performed on radio (Snap Judgement, WNYC Studios) and for hundreds of festivals, bookstores, conferences, variety shows, and universities. He lives in Savannah, Georgia.

Editorial Reviews

★ 07/31/2023

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. Agent: Deborah Grosvenor, Grosvenor Literary. (June)

Publishers Weekly

Praise for Congratulations, Who Are You Again?:

“Key humorously and tenderly mines his own life to understand why on earth anyone would want to become a writer.” —Garden & Gun

“Key is as wise as he is funny.” —Christian Century

“Consistently funny . . . For all of his biting wit, Key’s love of writing is what shines through. . . . Congratulations, Who Are You Again? will have readers looking for more from this talented author. —Kirkus Reviews

“A keenly observed account of the publishing process . . . Hilarious and illuminating.” —Booklist

Praise for The World’s Largest Man:

Winner of the Thurber Prize for American Humor

“An exceptional memoir.” —New York Journal of Books

“Key’s talent is all his own. . . . Consistently seasoned with laughs, this memoir is adroitly warm and deep when it is called for. An uncommonly entertaining story replete with consistent wit and lethal weaponry.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“[Key has] a comic voice that puts him in the choir with other humorists you may have heard of—such as P.J. O’Rourke, Roy Blount Jr., Garrison Keillor, Lewis Grizzard, Dave Barry and others. Maybe even Mark Twain. The World’s Largest Man is a triumph of a comic memoir.” —Mississippi Business Journal

“Funny as well as tender.” —New York Times

“Both laugh-out-loud funny and observant about the ways we become our parents while asserting ourselves, The World’s Largest Man is a wise delight.” —BookPage

“Smart, funny, and wildly engaging . . . Fans of memoir, personal essays, and humor writing will devour this in one sitting.” —Library Journal

From the Publisher

★ 2023-03-11
Vivid scenes from a fractured marriage.

Every tumultuous marriage has its unique set of fault lines. One combination occurs when a spouse feels trapped because of her partner’s perceived inattention and insensitivity. That was the case with Key and his wife, whom he calls Lauren, “perhaps my greatest literary creation” and “the deliverer of wincing punch lines to my foolishness.” The line she delivered in 2017, however, after a decade and a half of marriage, was anything but funny: She was having an affair with a man Key refers to as Chad—“We’ve all been dumped for Chads”—a married neighbor in their adopted town of Savannah, Georgia. That devastating admission is the driving force of this witty, painful memoir. Key, who received the 2016 Thurber Prize for American Humor for The World’s Largest Man, describes in grimly hilarious detail the affair and its effect on their union and on their three daughters, who, in a touch typical of the author’s humor, he refers to as Coco, Pippi, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Most notably, Key describes the ways in which the affair tested the couple’s Christian faith. Admirably, the author not only lambastes himself for his own errors—when they started couples therapy, “Her noose loosened, and so did my blinders begin to fall”—but also gives Lauren an extended chapter in which she explains how insignificant she felt with a husband who had “his nose always stuck in a book or a laptop or staring out the window looking for the next idea.” This book documents Key’s attempt to summon love and understanding in the face of Lauren’s admission, seeking guidance from friends and the Bible. It makes for occasionally dark reading, but it’s never maudlin or vindictive. Through it all, Key demonstrates his gift for memorable humorous descriptions, as when he writes of himself on his wedding day, “I felt hideous and puffy, a Twinkie in the rain.”

An exceptional memoir of a humorist’s attempts to deal with his wife’s infidelity.

Kirkus Reviews