How to Stay Married

May 15, 2023
Harrison Scott Key (Congratulations, Who Are You Again? 2018) had many beliefs about life, purpose, and marriage. After being married for 15 years, becoming dad to two children, and launching a successful writing career, it was easy to feel confident. Enter his wife's foundation-rattling announcement that she wanted a divorce. Harrison wondered: had she changed? Had he? Worse: his wife was in love with someone else, and not just anyone, but Chad, the dullest guy on their sleepy block. How had Key failed his wife? And how could he not have noticed that while she sat across the room, she wasn't coordinating carpools but was texting her boyfriend. Key, winner of the Thurber Prize for humor, and his wife are both funny people. As their story explores, love between two people who use humor as armor can be spiky and delicate. But Key won't give up on his family so easily. This hilarious and heartbreaking memoir lays the deepest human pain bare and will leave readers breathless and feeling seen.

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Starred review from July 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.

Starred review from April 1, 2023
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.

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