HOW TO STAY MARRIED by Harrison Scott Key
As I was pondering how to describe Harrison Scott Key’s writing in How to Stay Married: The Most Insane Love Story Ever Told, the word “lightness” came to mind. A story of heartbreak and infidelity has every right to be heavy (while also risking heavy-handedness), yet Harrison defies gravity while excavating—and salvaging—the rubble of his once stable marriage. Somehow he does this without sacrificing any of the introspection and authenticity we expect from a great literary memoir.
In How to Stay Married, Harrison takes his readers on an emotional roller coaster ride through the euphoric highs and plunging lows of his marriage; his self-deprecating humor and unflagging spirit keep us clinging on through every twist and turn. Harrison says it best:
“This is really and truly a murder mystery. It begins, naturally, with a murder (our marriage, savagely murdered), an investigation into the primary suspects (her, me, God, institutional religion, late-stage capitalism, pop psychology, et al.), the evidence weighed, including many rash attempts to enter the morgue and revive the body, only to find out that the marriage can live again, but only if we both—she and I—are willing to die to let it live.”
Harrison will be joining us to talk about the How to Stay Married on Wednesday, April 24 at 5:30 p.m. CDT / 6:30 p.m. EDT. You can order a copy of the book from our partners—Lemuria Books and Friendly City Books—or purchase one through our affiliate Bookshop link.
Here is the official description of the book:
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.
About the author:
Harrison Scott Key is the author of How to Stay Married, Congratulations, Who Are You Again?, and The World's Largest Man, winner of the Thurber Prize for American Humor. His first TEDx talk went viral among a certain demographic. Harrison's humor and nonfiction have appeared in The Best American Travel Writing, Oxford American, Outside, The New York Times, The Bitter Southerner, McSweeney's Internet Tendency, Town & Country, The Mockingbird, Salon, Savannah Magazine, Reader's Digest, Image, Southern Living, Gulf Coast, and Creative Nonfiction. He holds an M.F.A. in creative nonfiction and a Ph.D. in playwriting and has worked at SCAD for quite literally thousands of years, where he’s held appointments as chair of liberal arts, professor of English, professor of writing, and executive dean. Born in Memphis and raised in Mississippi, he lives in Savannah, Georgia, with three children and one wife.
The Rooted Book Club is in partnership with the Mississippi Book Festival, Lemuria Books, and Friendly City Books. Red Squared records and produces our book club conversations at their podcast studio in The Hangar in Midtown, Jackson. Reach out or leave a comment with any questions, suggestions, or comments. Happy reading!
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