How to Stay Married

“I read Harrison Scott Key’s hilarious, raw, bracing, profound memoir How to Stay Married and have been recommending it to everyone I know. Read it! I’ve never read anything else quite like it.” —Eleanor Barkhorn, The Atlantic“Do I really care about 300 pages on some stranger’s marriage? It turns out I did… . There is an energy to How to Stay Married that I haven’t previously experienced in a memoir… . Shot through with sharp humor … Perhaps the most unexpected chapter is written by Lauren. It’s rare to hear both sides in a memoir about an affair. Lauren’s insights into her own feelings are both surprising and intriguing.” —Jane Smiley, The Washington Post“In this outstanding memoir about the near-end of his marriage, humorist Key brilliantly recounts the circumstances before, during, and after his wife’s affair with their neighbor… . He skillfully intertwines cutting comedy … with heart-wrenching musings … and explanations of the spiritual impact the experience has on him… . Key’s willingness to laugh at himself and share ownership of the couple’s marital issues elevates this… . A fiercely memorable account of marital devotion against all odds.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)“Despite the ‘How to’ of the title, the book is not an advice column… . It’s a memoir that tells one story of an unhappy marriage that was authentically saved by grace… with an authenticity, vulnerability, and comedy that’s missing in most books on this topic… . If I could, I’d give everyone a copy of How to Stay Married. As I was reading it, my husband listened to me laugh aloud and begged to hear what was so funny. I read most of it in one night because the drama kept me flipping pages. When I’d finished the book—after reading at least a third of it aloud to my husband—we both wanted to try marriage counseling. ‘Like a tune-up,’ my husband said.” —Jessica Hooten Wilson, Christianity Today“‘The reality is that every marriage is a partnership of two broken’ jerks ‘with good intentions and varying degrees of ability to deliver.’ That sentiment doesn’t make for a heartwarming YouTube video, but it’s honest and mostly true.” —Jessica Grose, New York Times“An exceptional memoir of a humorist’s attempts to deal with his wife’s infidelity.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)“This hilarious and heartbreaking memoir lays the deepest human pain bare and will leave readers breathless and feeling seen.” —Booklist“The humorous memoir details his wife’s infidelity, the nearly total collapse of their marriage and the difficult path they follow in the ensuing years to save it. Readers might reasonably expect Key’s telling of ‘what happened,’ including the crisis of his own Christian faith that arises from the event, to be about as funny as a cancer diagnosis. Readers would be wrong.” —Nashville Scene“What’s a humor writer to do when he discovers his wife and the mother of their three daughters has been unfaithful? He writes a memoir charting the fallout. While he mines plenty of humor from the situation, Key also does a lot of serious soul searching and embarks on a spiritual journey in the process.” —The Atlanta Journal Constitution, “Summer’s Brightest New Beach Reads”

Harrison Scott Key is the author of The World’s Largest Man, winner of the Thurber Prize for American Humor, and Congratulations, Who Are You, Again? Harrison’s TEDx talk about the challenges and rewards of creative ambition (“The Funny Thing About the American Dream”) is featured on TED.com, and his humor and nonfiction have appeared in The Best American Travel Writing, Oxford American, Outside, The New York Times, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, Bitter Southerner, Town & Country, The Mockingbird, Salon, Reader’s Digest, Image, Southern Living, Gulf Coast, Creative Nonfiction, and elsewhere. He has spoken and performed on radio ( Snap Judgement, WNYC Studios) and for hundreds of festivals, bookstores, conferences, variety shows, and universities. He lives in Savannah, Georgia.