Wedding Toasts I'll Never Give

by Ada Calhoun

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Pub Date May 16 2017 | Archive Date Apr 30 2017

W. W. Norton & Company

Biographies & Memoirs | Self-Help

Description

We hear plenty about whether or not to get married, but much less about what it takes to stay married. Clichés around marriage—eternal bliss, domestic harmony, soul mates—leave out the real stuff. After marriage you may still want to sleep with other people. Sometimes your partner will bore the hell out of you. And when stuck paying for your spouse’s mistakes, you might miss being single. In Wedding Toasts I’ll Never Give, Ada Calhoun presents an unflinching but also loving portrait of her own marriage, opening a long-overdue conversation about the institution as it truly is: not the happy ending of a love story or a relic doomed by high divorce rates, but the beginning of a challenging new chapter of which “the first twenty years are the hardest.” Calhoun’s funny, poignant personal essays explore the bedrooms of modern coupledom for a nuanced discussion of infidelity, existential anxiety, and the many other obstacles to staying together. Both realistic and openhearted, Wedding Toasts I’ll Never Give offers a refreshing new way to think about marriage as a brave, tough, creative decision to stay with another person for the rest of your life. “What a burden,” Calhoun calls marriage, “and what a gift.”

A Note From the Publisher

LibraryReads nominations due by 3/20 and IndieNext nominations due by 3/3.

Advance Praise

“Ada Calhoun has written the definitive meditation on marriage in all of its mystery and imperfection. It should be required reading for anyone considering it, and highly recommended for those who want to be reminded of why they did it in the first place.” - Molly Ringwald

“Ada Calhoun is the friend we all need--the one who lets us behind the curtain of her good marriage to help us better understand our own. She's smart, funny, and best of all, willing to bare all.” - Emma Straub, New York Times-bestselling author of Modern Lovers

“A warm, tart, corrective to the persistent conviction that a wedding is the neat end of a love story.” - Rebecca Traister, New York Times-bestselling author of All the Single Ladies

“Wedding Toasts I'll Never Give is an uncommonly gracious invitation to rethink our relationship to an institution that often seems to have us doomed before we begin. There's been so much cant, as they used to say in the 19th century, written about marriage, but Ada Calhoun's book is honest about the struggle to love another person without congratulating itself for being honest, and if that isn’t a spiritual discipline, I don't know what is.” - Carlene Bauer, author of Frances and Bernard and Not That Kind of Girl

“Wedding Toasts I'll Never Give is extremely funny and deeply insightful. With its generous spirit and breathtaking honesty, Ada Calhoun's instruction manual of a book recalls another all-time favorite, Anne Lamott's classic Bird by Bird. This slim volume is brimming with practical advice, and should be mandatory reading for married people and anyone who's contemplated taking the leap.” - Davy Rothbart, author of My Heart is an Idiot, creator of FOUND Magazine, and contributor to NPR’s This American Life

“What a witty, sexy, surprising testimony to the institution of marriage! It's the best essay collection I've read in a long time, just astoundingly honest and insightful about what marriage really means. And I say that as someone who has been married 20 years.” - Karen Abbott, New York Times bestselling author of Sin in the Second City and Liar, Temptress, Soldier, Spy

Available Editions

EDITION	Other Format
ISBN	9780393254792
PRICE	$24.95 (USD)
PAGES	192

Additional Information

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Featured Reviews

Librarian 285428

I thought this book was witty, clever and very true to how marriage is. I think this will be an bit hit and talked about among many friend groups and bookclubs! I found myself telling multiple friends about this book because it connected to a conversation we were having. Great book, highly recommend!