Wedding Toasts I'll Never Give

by Ada Calhoun

Overview

Seven essays celebrating the beauty of the imperfect marriage.

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.”

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780393356007
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	06/05/2018
Pages:	192
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.20(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Ada Calhoun has written for the New York Times, New York magazine, and the New York Post. Her book St. Marks Is Dead was named a New York Times Editors’ Choice and a Boston Globe Best Book of the Year.

Table of Contents

Introduction: "Do You Know Why You're Here?" 13

Toast 1 Paying for Each Others Mistakes 21

Toast 2 The Boring Parts 32

Toast 3 Containing Multitudes 54

Toast 4 The Truth About Soul Mates 70

Toast 5 Fighting in Rental Cars 87

Toast 6 Other People, Other Cities 99

Toast 7 "Love Is Strong as Death" 128

Epilogue: One Toast I Would Actually Give 157

Appendix: Toward a More Realistic Reception Playlist 165

Acknowledgments 167

Notes 169

Bibliography 183

Editorial Reviews

"Light and funny… original, engrossing."

Heather Havrilesky

"Raise a glass to these reality-check essays that are equal parts ode to marriage… and sly acknowledgment of its challenges."

O, The Oprah Magazine - 10 Titles to Pick Up Now

"Last book that made you laugh? Ada Calhoun’s Wedding Toasts I’ll Never Give. I mean, underlining and yellow marker bust-out laughs."

By the Book - New York Times Book Review - Tom Hanks

"By turns funny, melancholy, and profound. A thoughtful read of the monogamous, non-monogamous, and every relationship iteration in between."

New York

Calhoun offers marital anecdotes rich with the alternating warmth and pathos that typify a long-lasting union…

The New York Times Book Review - Heather Havrilesky

03/13/2017
Inspired by her popular Modern Love essay published in the New York Times, Calhoun (St. Marks Is Dead) takes a humorous, realistic, and loving look at marriage in this collection of essays modeled after wedding toasts. Each essay mixes components of memoir and self-help, drawing on insight from Calhoun’s own marriage as well as the wise thoughts of clergymen and lessons learned from long-married couples. “The main problem with marriage may be that its not better than the rest of life,” she writes, explaining that “we think it will be different—purer, deeper, gentler—than other relationships.” Marriage isn’t just about the hearts and flowers stage, she opines, but also about occasionally lusting after others, buying houses, raising children, and everything in between. At various points in the book Calhoun is laugh-out-loud funny (as when she is compares a baby’s reaction to being baptized to the Onion’s classic op-ed about lobster entitled “Just Wait ’Til I Get These Fucking Rubber Bands Off”) and at other times painful (she describes coping with her husband’s affair) but always direct and honest. In the final essay, Calhoun offers the one wedding toast she would actually give: “Weddings remind us why we were put on earth... nothing more nor less than these moments will keep you—will keep us—together, all the days of our lives.” This realistic, empathetic book of advice is worthy of a spot on any newlyweds’ bookshelf. (May)

Publishers Weekly

"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

"Raw and relatable."

Brides - Jill Sieracki

"One of the 10 best memoirs of 2017 . . . This frank collection meditates on marriage as an ever-evolving thing, one full of failure and triumph and lots of change, tackling the whimsical idea of soulmates and "the boring parts" of being partnered up. A hilarious relief from the 'happily ever after' narrative."

W Magazine

"[A] lovely meditation on what it means to be married and faithful in this age…. I just felt a lot of affection for this book."

John Williams Podcast

"[Calhoun’s] witty, enthusiastic, emotional, and hard-headed reflections ought to be required reading for anyone entering, experiencing, leaving or avoiding marriage."

Guardian - Jonathan Sale

"You really need to read this book."

Austin Chronicle - Wayne Alan Brenner

"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

"Raise a glass to these reality-check essays that are equal parts ode to marriage… and sly acknowledgment of its challenges."

"10 Titles to Pick Up Now" O Magazine

"Brutally honest, hilarious and unsentimental—but never unkind—this is a book for anyone who has ever had a thought (good or bad) about the institution of marriage. I devoured this gem in one sitting. I want to marry this book."

Susannah Cahalan

"A fine gift to tuck between negligees and garter belts at the more literary bride’s shower....[Calhoun’s] wry, likable voice is at its Ephronesque best."

Lisa Zeidner

"Wedding Toasts I’ll Never Give does away with the fabled ‘happily ever after’… This isn’t a manifesto against the institution; rather, Calhoun shows how challenging yet rewarding it can be."

Bustle, Best Nonfiction Books of the Month - Stephanie Topacio Long

"A warm, tart, corrective to the persistent conviction that a wedding is the neat end of a love story."

Rebecca Traister

"By turns hilariously candid, thought-provoking, and romantic, Wedding Toasts I’ll Never Give gave me a richer view of the joys and challenges of marriage—especially my own marriage."

Gretchen Rubin

"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

"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

"By turns funny, melancholy, and profound. A thoughtful read of the monogamous, non-monogamous, and every relationship iteration in between."

New York Magazine

"[A] lovely meditation on what it means to be married and faithful in this age…. I just felt a lot of affection for this book."

New York Times Book Review Podcast - John Williams

02/15/2017
Ushering in the arrival of the spring wedding season, two writers, both usually identified with other topics, offer their insights into what keeps the marriage machinery running. Novelist Piazza (The Knockoff) recounts the first year of her marriage to a man she knew for less than a year. With her parents' own rocky relationship as her only guide to married life, and the challenges the union faced early on owing to the revelation of a potentially devastating medical diagnosis, Piazza sets off on a worldwide odyssey in search of advice about how to be married. She seeks guidance from sources ranging from observant Jewish women in Israel to members of polygamous communities in Kenya with several stops in between (including tense discussions with chic French women). Her takeaways include timeless advice (keep talking to each other), along with updated adages (maybe it is okay to go to sleep angry, especially if you are tired). Piazza's insistence on maintaining her independence—even on the dance floor—despite having become a "wife," lends this account an uplifting tone.Calhoun's (St. Marks Is Dead) foray into the world of marital musing began with her oft-shared 2015 New York Times "Modern Love" column, "The Wedding Toast I'll Never Give," a pithy summation of the realities of marriage from the point of view of a veteran member of the institution. Calhoun, whose own marriage to a performance artist is in its second decade, expands upon her original piece in this series of graceful essays that explore the significance of marriage in a time that no longer deems marriage a necessity. Alternating between hilarious personal anecdote and sobering professional insight, this memoir conveys perhaps the simplest lesson ever given about learning to make a marriage last: just don't get divorced. Her other great contribution to the literature on marital happiness might be her explanation of why fights in cars are the worst: you cannot storm off. VERDICT Piazza and Calhoun approach the conundrum of connubial happiness from differing (albeit white, heterosexual) vantage points, but with the same endpoint of golden anniversaries in mind.—Thérèse Purcell Nielsen, Huntington P.L., NY

Library Journal

Author Ada Calhoun narrates her meditation on marriage—what occurs AFTER the wedding—with all its messy imperfections. Calhoun’s reflections are an extension of her wildly popular NEW YORK TIMES essay “The Wedding Toast I’ll Never Give.”) She delivers her commentary on the pain and pleasure of married life in a candid, straightforward style. As she weaves her own intimate vignettes of married life with insights from experts, it’s meaningful to hear these stories and insights in her own words. Taking aim at the myth of happy-ever-after marital bliss and instead offering a more grounded portrait of the actual ongoing work involved in long-term partnerships, Calhoun’s voice is steady, thoughtful, and unhurried—as if she’s sharing her insights with a friend over coffee. J.C.G. © AudioFile 2017, Portland, Maine

NOVEMBER 2017 - AudioFile

2017-02-07
True love never runs smooth according to these essays, which could pass as a memoir of the author's own marriage.Calhoun made her well-received debut with St. Marks Is Dead (2015), an impressive volume of journalistic research that blended the historical with the personal. This is a slighter work, though not the sort that rock critics would call a sophomore slump. Title aside, this will resonate most strongly not with those about to get married but with those who have been married awhile, even happily so, but who deal with the sort of struggles and tensions that all married couples do. After a fight with her husband, when Calhoun asked her mother the key to staying married, she received the reply: " ‘You don't get divorced.' At the time, I thought her response flip, but now I consider it wise." A long-married woman told her, " ‘the first twenty years are the hardest'….At the time I thought she was joking. She was not." Having yet to hit the 20-year mark in a marriage that appears stable, the author approaches her subject not as the voice of wisdom and experience but as someone in the same trenches who can comfort her married readers that they are not alone. She still feels (and occasionally submits to) strong attractions to the opposite gender, and she resents it when her husband does as well. When she writes of a book-tour encounter, "we'd made out, but not too much—unless you think that anything when you're married to someone else is too much, in which case this was definitely way too much," readers may wonder about Calhoun's maturity. But she's engaging and all-too-human, chronicling the strains of being together, being apart, sharing a rental car, screwing up finances, raising a son, and somehow staying together in spite of (and maybe because of) it all. Calhoun ends with a toast that she actually would give, and it's wise and lovely.

Kirkus Reviews