Publishers Weekly
04/17/2023
Novelist Ellis (Bring Your Baggage) serves up irreverent essays about married life in all its less-than-glamorous glory. The author finds humor in the mundane, the semi-ridiculous (an extended email to a cat-sitter, full of painstaking detail for caring for an 16-year-old feline), and the sweet (on a not very successful attempt to cook moussaka, “the recipe equivalent of translating War and Peace,” for her husband: “We are married now because he ate that then”). Elsewhere, she rhapsodizes about Viagra and comments on the ways married sex has defied her expectations (“If someone told me... that the best sex I’d ever have would be in my fifties with my fiftysomething-year-old husband, I’d never have believed them”) and reminisces on her “last first kiss” with her husband, which the two recall differently (“This is how memory works in a happy marriage.... We are writing our own love story”). While one or two pieces feel incongruous, including a jokey, underbaked bit on housecleaning, Ellis’s writing is on balance assured, charming, and laced with an understated humor that nearly always hits its mark—as when she describes her injured, Percocet-medicated mother at her sister’s wedding, “mingling in broken English” with a man she thought she didn’t know but who turned out to be her cousin. This delights. (June)
From the Publisher
"Hilarious, off-the-wall....Perfect comic timing.....Ellis manages to keep things fresh even when she returns to subjects she's written about before....Ellis has some serious points to make, but...comedy is what drives Coral Lounge....Charming."
—Heller McAlpin, NPR
"Nothing is off limits for this transplanted Southerner—long-ago wedding day disasters, experiments with off-brand Viagra, the obituary of the boy who shared her first kiss—and she shares her colorful life honestly and hilariously."
—Nora Krug and Becky Meloan, The Washington Post
"Ellis is unapologetic in describing the kind of couple she and Lex are not....[She] isn't afraid to go against the norms....Her stories [are] filled with everyday life—the habits, the problems, the solutions—something so many of us can relate to....Read this book; it is hilarious. You will laugh hysterically. She's like a David Sedaris, but a Southern woman. My favorite type of David Sedaris."
—Jenna Bush Hager, The TODAY Show
"Now this is something new: open, honest, funny essays from a wife who is still in love with her husband after 20 years of marriage. (Yes, it's possible.)....But don't worry: She is hilarious, not sanctimonious about it! These essays are Ellis at her writerly best."
—Zibby Owens, Good Morning America
"It's not usually relationships that are going well that end in a book of funny stories, but Helen Ellis manages to pull it off with these essays about her and her husband of 20 years (who she's very much still in love with) as they navigate the pandemic lockdown in New York City. Everything from discussing an email that was sent to their cat sitter to their adventures trying out Viagra is pure gold."
—Laura Hanrahan, Cosmopolitan
"Whether it’s instructions for the pet sitter, a report on the joys of Viagra, or a deep dive into spousal snoring, Ellis has made herself, her Mr., and their two cats into irresistible characters. Their domestic adventures have a timeless quality that makes them not only funny but somehow soothing—and even more so when read with a background of ticking sprinklers."
—Oprah Daily
“Few writers delight me like Helen Ellis does….When reading her essays… I inevitably end up texting my best friends the lines that make me literally LOL.”
—CJ Lotz, Garden and Gun
"Ellis excels at drawing humor out of ordinary life events in the same way a doctor can draw poison from a snakebite. She finds the funny in situations that otherwise are not....'May I Hold Your Grudge for You?' an examination of her animosity toward a variety of enemies and loyalty to friends...exemplifies her appeal. She’s charming and friendly on the surface, but deeply human just the same....In Kiss Me in The Coral Lounge, Helen Ellis delivers more of her usual wit and wry observation in a succinct collection of essays reflecting the turmoil of recent history. It’s a collection for fans of her work, and anyone looking to find humor in the mundane."
—Ian Macallan, The Chicago Review of Books
"Ellis is one of our greatest living humorists, in the same league as Sedaris and Irby, and Kiss Me in the Coral Lounge is her best book. These hilarious and poignant essays are a fascinating portrait of middle-aged love, and I can’t recommend it highly enough.”
—Ann Napolitano, New York Times bestselling author of Dear Edward
"Helen Ellis may live in New York City now, but her Southern bona fides hold true… She displays the gift for gab and superior storytelling skills… Epic tales of hilarity involving a colorful cast of family and friends.”
—Atlanta Journal Constitution
“Laughing out loud is something I’ve continued to do every time I read something by Helen [Ellis], from her…social media feeds to…her books of essays…and her latest, Kiss Me in the Coral Lounge, in which she turns her gimlet eye toward marriage.”
—Amanda Heckert, Garden and Gun
"Helen Ellis’ collection of humorous essays, Kiss Me in the Coral Lounge, celebrates life with her loving husband as they navigate the COVID-19 lockdown in New York City. The hilarious essay "An Email To Our Cat Sitter" is worth the price of the book alone. Give this one to your favorite couple celebrating an anniversary."
—AuburnPub.com
"Helen Ellis is back with a funny and unabashedly romantic collection of essays about love, marriage and her last first kiss. The Coral Lounge is a room in Ellis's New York City apartment where all the parties happen. When the pandemic shuts down the city, the Coral Lounge becomes a place of refuge, where Helen and her husband binge-watch TV shows, dote on their cats and where Ellis discovers that even twenty years into marriage, her husband still makes her heart pitter patter. In these surprising, sexy and hilariously frank essays she explains why."
—PureWow
"Ellis serves up irreverent essays about married life in all its less-than-glamorous glory. The author finds humor in the mundane, the semi-ridiculous...and the sweet....Ellis’s writing is...assured, charming, and laced with an understated humor that nearly always hits its mark....This delights."
—Publishers Weekly
Kirkus Reviews
2023-03-25
Life and marriage can be difficult and hilarious, as these short essays demonstrate.
The chapter titles in this collection by novelist Ellis give a good indication of the tone throughout—e.g., “My Husband Snores and Yours Will Too,” “Slumber Party Side Effects May Include…,” and “How To Talk About Touchy Subjects.” Most of the pieces are whimsical with an edge, with the author holding forth on topics such as her marriage to a Greek American husband, her Alabama upbringing, her life among the New York literati, her fondness for grudges (“I love my shit list. If I had the nerve to type it, I’d laminate it”), and more. In the chapter on her husband’s snoring, Ellis chronicles her attempts to block it out. One tactic was to have him sleep in their TV room, which they call the Coral Lounge because “we painted it a delirious shade of coral that borders on Starburst candy orange.” In a memorable piece on wedding calamities, the author writes that she was late for her own wedding because she couldn’t get a taxi in midtown Manhattan, and two nights before the ceremony, “the Greek restaurant where we’d booked our reception had burnt to the ground.” In “A Woman Under the Influence of Joan Collins’s Dynasty,” Ellis notes that she binge-watched the prime-time soap because “I want to live like a 1980s TV villainess.” As with many essay collections, some lines are excellent while others feel forced. Unfortunately, this one has more than its share of clunkers. For example, “I want a sex drive that rivals a Chevrolet dealership.” This book is for readers who appreciate passages like this one about the revitalization of the author’s sex life after her husband started taking Viagra: “How can I put this? I haven’t seen Star Wars since the 1970s, but I know enough to recognize a lightsaber in my hand.”
Hit-or-miss comic essays on marriage and its discontents.
