Amusing essays about love, sex, and marriage.
A Slovenian humorist explores the ups and downs of romance in this collection of essays.
“Women,” Kesar writes, “almost certainly inadvertently crush our fragile egos. And we men drag that pain, like a ball and chain, from relationship to relationship in an endless tangle of utter disaster.” Rife with self-deprecating stories, from being allergic to a girlfriend’s perfume that made him sneeze during intimate moments to dealing with an ill-timed delay in the shipment of an engagement ring, the author offers readers real-life, comic examples of romance gone wrong. Now married with children, he also provides a tongue-in-cheek guidebook for marital bliss, most of which circles back to the titular refrain, “My Wife Is Always Right.” Divided into three parts, the book delivers 63 short essays that present witty vignettes about Kesar’s romantic misadventures. Part 1 centers on his dating life before marriage, including one essay about his disdain for lingerie as an unnecessary “frilly, lacy barrier between two people getting to know each other.” Part 2 focuses on the author’s engagement to his wife, their wedding, and “The Honeymoon that Involved Neither Honey nor the Moon.” The volume’s final section (“Life Together”) examines the ubiquitous story of fiery lovers whose relationship after marriage must adapt to routines, work schedules, and child rearing. Still, Kesar and his wife still manage to keep the flame lit, despite the author’s romantic stumbles and prickly facial stubble. The work concludes with a description of “The Four Secrets to a Happy Marriage,” which blends sincere insights (have common interests and “make compromises”) with humor. Originally published in Slovenian, the book features Charney’s English translation, which holds up well in maintaining the nuances of Kesar’s jokes. While the volume’s European sensibilities, from its open approach to sex to weekend jaunts to Barcelona, may not always resonate with American audiences, its focus on marriage will have a wide appeal. Although often genuinely funny, the work leans heavily on the tropes of sex-obsessed men and their begrudging wives that will have limited resonance for readers who reject heteronormative relationships and traditional gender roles.
Amusing essays about love, sex, and marriage.Pub Date: Sept. 13, 2022
ISBN: 9789619502495
Page Count: 202
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Nov. 27, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A frank and funny but uneven essay collection about neurodiversity.
An experimental, illustrated essay collection that questions neurotypical definitions of what is normal.
From a young age, writer and comedian Myers has been different. In addition to coping with obsessive compulsive disorder and panic attacks, she struggled to read basic social cues. During a round of seven minutes in heaven—a game in which two players spend seven minutes in a closet and are expected to kiss—Myers misread the romantic advances of her best friend and longtime crush, Marley. In Paris, she accidentally invited a sex worker to join her friends for “board games and beer,” thinking he was simply a random stranger who happened to be hitting on her. In community college, a stranger’s request for a pen spiraled her into a panic attack but resulted in a tentative friendship. When the author moved to Australia, she began taking notes on her colleagues in an effort to know them better. As the author says to her co-worker, Tabitha, “there are unspoken social contracts within a workplace that—by some miracle—everyone else already understands, and I don’t….When things Go Without Saying, they Never Get Said, and sometimes people need you to Say Those Things So They Understand What The Hell Is Going On.” At its best, Myers’ prose is vulnerable and humorous, capturing characterization in small but consequential life moments, and her illustrations beautifully complement the text. Unfortunately, the author’s tendency toward unnecessary capitalization and experimental forms is often unsuccessful, breaking the book’s otherwise steady rhythm.
A frank and funny but uneven essay collection about neurodiversity.Pub Date: Oct. 28, 2025
ISBN: 9780063381308
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2025
A pleasure for fans of old-school historical narratives.
Avuncular observations on matters historical from the late popularizer of the past.
McCullough made a fine career of storytelling his way through past events and the great men (and occasional woman) of long-ago American history. In that regard, to say nothing of his eschewing modern technology in favor of the typewriter (“I love the way the bell rings every time I swing the carriage lever”), he might be thought of as belonging to a past age himself. In this set of occasional pieces, including various speeches and genial essays on what to read and how to write, he strikes a strong tone as an old-fashioned moralist: “Indifference to history isn’t just ignorant, it’s rude,” he thunders. “It’s a form of ingratitude.” There are some charming reminiscences in here. One concerns cajoling his way into a meeting with Arthur Schlesinger in order to pitch a speech to presidential candidate John F. Kennedy: Where Richard Nixon “has no character and no convictions,” he opined, Kennedy “is appealing to our best instincts.” McCullough allows that it wasn’t the strongest of ideas, but Schlesinger told him to write up a speech anyway, and when it got to Kennedy, “he gave a speech in which there was one paragraph that had once sentence written by me.” Some of McCullough’s appreciations here are of writers who are not much read these days, such as Herman Wouk and Paul Horgan; a long piece concerns a president who’s been largely lost in the shuffle too, Harry Truman, whose decision to drop the atomic bomb on Japan McCullough defends. At his best here, McCullough uses history as a way to orient thinking about the present, and with luck to good ends: “I am a short-range pessimist and a long-range optimist. I sincerely believe that we may be on the way to a very different and far better time.”
A pleasure for fans of old-school historical narratives.Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2025
ISBN: 9781668098998
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: June 26, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
