5/20/10
Books: You Say Tomato, I Say Shut Up

When we reviewed the book The Husbands and Wives Club: A Year in the Life of a Couples Therapy Group a few weeks back, we wrote: “Here are five couples who reject — albeit under the firm hand of a skilled therapist — the notion that there are only two acceptable narratives when it comes to talking about your own marriage: the long-walks-on-the-beach love story, or what [the author] calls the “resigned farce” — husbands and wives alike joking about their domestically useless/sexually burdensome/nagging spouse.”

Well, the authors of the memoir You Say Tomato, I Say Shut Up: A Love Story have reinvented the resigned farce. And because Annabelle Gurwitch and Jeff Kahn are (a) writers and comedians and (b) clearly still in love after 13 years of marriage, it works. (Okay, it mostly works: The multiple-page transcript of their attempt at marriage therapy was torturous to read, but perhaps that was the point.)

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