Publishers Weekly
★ 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)
From the Publisher
I read Harrison Scott Key’s hilarious, raw, bracing, profound memoir How to Stay Married and have been recommending it to everyone I know. Read it! I’ve never read anything else quite like it.” —Eleanor Barkhorn, The Atlantic
“Do I really care about 300 pages on some stranger’s marriage? It turns out I did. . . . There is an energy to How to Stay Married that I haven’t previously experienced in a memoir. . . . Shot through with sharp humor . . . Perhaps the most unexpected chapter is written by Lauren. It’s rare to hear both sides in a memoir about an affair. Lauren’s insights into her own feelings are both surprising and intriguing.” —Jane Smiley, The Washington Post
“In this outstanding memoir about the near-end of his marriage, humorist Key brilliantly recounts the circumstances before, during, and after his wife’s affair with their neighbor. . . . He skillfully intertwines cutting comedy . . . with heart-wrenching musings . . . and explanations of the spiritual impact the experience has on him. . . . Key’s willingness to laugh at himself and share ownership of the couple’s marital issues elevates this. . . . A fiercely memorable account of marital devotion against all odds.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“Despite the ‘How to’ of the title, the book is not an advice column. . . . It’s a memoir that tells one story of an unhappy marriage that was authentically saved by grace. . . with an authenticity, vulnerability, and comedy that’s missing in most books on this topic. . . . If I could, I’d give everyone a copy of How to Stay Married. As I was reading it, my husband listened to me laugh aloud and begged to hear what was so funny. I read most of it in one night because the drama kept me flipping pages. When I’d finished the book—after reading at least a third of it aloud to my husband—we both wanted to try marriage counseling. ‘Like a tune-up,’ my husband said.” —Jessica Hooten Wilson, Christianity Today
“An exceptional memoir of a humorist’s attempts to deal with his wife’s infidelity.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“This hilarious and heartbreaking memoir lays the deepest human pain bare and will leave readers breathless and feeling seen.” —Booklist
“The humorous memoir details his wife’s infidelity, the nearly total collapse of their marriage and the difficult path they follow in the ensuing years to save it. Readers might reasonably expect Key’s telling of ‘what happened,’ including the crisis of his own Christian faith that arises from the event, to be about as funny as a cancer diagnosis. Readers would be wrong.” —Nashville Scene
“What’s a humor writer to do when he discovers his wife and the mother of their three daughters has been unfaithful? He writes a memoir charting the fallout. While he mines plenty of humor from the situation, Key also does a lot of serious soul searching and embarks on a spiritual journey in the process.” —The Atlanta Journal Constitution, “Summer’s Brightest New Beach Reads”
Kirkus Reviews
★ 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.
