Wedding Toasts I’ll Never Give
7 Essays on Marriage
A refreshing take on marriage.
One of the ten memoirs of the year (W magazine), Wedding Toasts I’ll Never Give shows that marriage “isn’t a happy ending, but rather an opening scene” (Times Literary Supplement). In these “warm-hearted, Ephron-esque” (Washington Post) essays inspired by her popular “Modern Love” column of the same name, Ada Calhoun offers a “funny” (Today Show), “insightful” (Star, “Hot Book”), “raw and relatable” (Brides) portrait of modern coupledom, “a thoughtful read for the monogamous, non-monogamous, and every relationship iteration in between” (New York). In the New York Times Book Review, Tom Hanks said it was the last book to make him laugh: “I mean, underlining and yellow marker bust-out laughs.” Molly Ringwald called it “the definitive meditation on marriage in all of its mystery and imperfection.”
“ONE OF THE TEN 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… A hilarious relief from the 'happily ever after' narrative.”
“[A] lighthearted approach to the toils and snares of marriage… original, engrossing.”
“Raise a glass to these reality-check essays that are equal parts ode to marriage (“I adore my husband and plan to be with him forever”) and sly acknowledgement to its challenges (“I also want to run screaming from the house because he insists on falling asleep to Frasier reruns”).
—O magazine, “10 Titles to Pick Up Now,” June 2017
“Ada Calhoun (of St. Marks Is Dead) has written a collection of linked essays on marriage and growing older that is by turns funny, melancholy, and profound. A thoughtful read for the monogamous, the non-monogamous, and every relationship iteration in between.”
—New York magazine
“Breezy, warm-hearted...wry, likable...Ephronesque.”
—Washington Post
“Calhoun plumbs personal material for her explorations into how to guide others through a wedding’s great beyond while drawing on extensive research and interviews with scholars, clergy, and acquaintances at different stages of marriage….Readers will marvel at the connections she makes through her many-limbed approach….Moving, refreshing, funny.”
—Booklist
“A humorous, realistic, and loving look at marriage….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….Calhoun is laugh-out- loud funny….This realistic, empathetic book of advice is worthy of a spot on any newlyweds’ bookshelf.”
—Publishers Weekly
“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.”
“Exactly what you need to read if you’ve been married for a while. And if you’re not married yet? But you’re planning on getting married eventually? Or you’ve already set a date, booked a reception hall, have rolled your eyes at advertisements for Sandals resorts so many times that those eyes are nearly shredded from supraorbital friction? Then you really need to read this book of Calhoun’s.”
“This series of graceful essays… explore[s] 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.”
“[Ada Calhoun's] witty, enthusiastic, cautionary, emotional and hard-headed reflections ought to be required reading for anyone entering, experiencing, leaving or avoiding marriage...Not to mention those of us who as a guest have ever been asked to make a speech about the happy couple and want to avoid putting our big feet in our nervous mouths.”
—The Guardian UK
“[This] frank and humorous new book... provides a much-needed dose of reality about the ups and downs of married life, along with wisdom from experts and long-married couples on what it takes to make a marriage last.”
—Institute for Family Studies
“Insightful, humorous, and relatable musings on matrimony? We'll drink to that.”
—Star
“Ada Calhoun’s new book offers an intimate look at her marriage, encouraging me that it’s something still worth wanting, and that I don’t need to be ashamed of hoping for it. It was a delight to read about the sort of marriage I might actually be comfortable inside: not a perfect love story, but a real one.”
“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
“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, New York Times bestselling author of Sin in the Second City
“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, New York Times bestselling author of The Happiness Project
“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, New York Times bestselling author of Modern Lovers
“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, author of My Heart is an Idiot
“A warm, tart, corrective to the persistent conviction that a wedding is the neat end of a love story.”
—Rebecca Traister, New York Times bestselling author of All the Single Ladies
“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, New York Times bestselling author of Brain on Fire
“Wedding Toasts I’ll Never Give is an uncommonly gracious invitation to rethink our relationship to an institution that often seems to have us doomed before we begin. There’s been so much cant, as they used to say in the 19th century, written about marriage, but Ada Calhoun’s book is honest about the struggle to love another person without congratulating itself for being honest, and if that isn’t a spiritual discipline, I don’t know what is.”
—Carlene Bauer, author of Frances and Bernard and Not That Kind of Girl
“This unflinchingly honest, astutely balanced probe of a most perplexing institution asks all the right questions. It sets up a conversation with the reader, who is challenged to reflect at each point, choosing between ‘No, that’s not me’ and ‘How did she know that?’ Most of the time, she knows.”
—Phillip Lopate, author of The Art of the Personal Essay
“True, funny, and wise, Ada Calhoun’s insight into the nature of marriage is a compulsively readable and sneakily profound primer on all interpersonal relationships. She should be required to give a toast at every wedding, Bar Mitzvah, and funeral she attends.”
—Leah Carroll, author of Down City: A Daughter’s Story of Love, Memory, and Murder
“This really spoke to me. It’s a beautiful love letter to what marriage is. Ada Calhoun seems like she’d be a ball to hang out with. Marriage: not so bad, guys.”
—Kathryn Hahn, actress (Transparent, Crossing Jordan)
