Thanks to Arnold & Maria, everybody has marriage on the mind. Pamela Haag's Marriage Confidential is the perfect book club choice because it lets women vent on cheating husbands, betrayed wives and why people marry in the first place.
This personal meditation on the modern marital state asks questions instead of providing answers. It is also free of the inflammatory political and cultural baggage that usually accompanies the topic. Hers is the rare book a divorced parent can read without feeling he or she has personally undermined Western civilization. (Alas, it has no inside dish on famous couples.)
Haag writes about her own marriage, and examines other unions. If you have a low threshold for privileged young mommies whining about the dullness of domesticity, brace yourself. A mother of one child, Haag has degrees from Swarthmore, a history Ph.D from Yale and an MFA in creative non-fiction from Goucher. Her triathlete husband — a devoted father — does financial engineering for a commodities trading firm.
Fortunately, Haag's awkward depiction of her boringly stable relationship is just part of the story. Things perk up when she writes about other people's far weirder unions.
Her chapter on "workhorse wives" will inflame any mixed book club gathering because of questions it raises about feminism. Haag depicts what she calls "Tom Sawyer marriages" where exhausted angry wives tote the financial burden while relaxed liberated husbands pursue their creative bliss sans paycheck. The chapter about "royal children" is pretty intriguing as well. Modern parents fixate on their kids' well-being in a manner once reserved solely for the hemophiliac heir to the Russian throne.
Haag leaves the most riveting stuff — sex — for the end.
With divorce so costly, some couples are exploring what might be described a more European approach to adultery, with a big assist from the Web.
Marriage Confidential won't make you stray if you're faithful nor sad if you're single. But it does make you reflect on modern mating habits. It's fun.
