Book of the week: Marry Him: The Case for Settling for Mr. Good Enough by Lori Gottlieb

(Dutton, 336 pages, $25.95)

Lori Gottlieb has a lot of nerve, said Alex Kuczynski in O magazine. A year ago, the “gorgeous, vivacious,” and accomplished 41-year-old “set off a firestorm” by publishing a biting essay in The Atlantic in which she presented herself as a cautionary example of what can happen to a woman who spends too many years rejecting perfectly nice boyfriends over such trifles as bad breath or tacky jeans. Gottlieb, who is raising a young son on her own after using a sperm donor to conceive, urged other single women to stop being so choosy, lest they blow past their best childbearing years. Her argument, now extended to book length, proves “surprisingly, unnervingly convincing.” The “you go, girl” culture, she’s saying, has brainwashed women into thinking that they’re all perfect, and thus all deserve an absolutely perfect husband.

If there are that many immature women out there, said Julia Baird in Newsweek, surveys haven’t found them. A recent Pew study showed that women “are in fact lowering their standards” to find a husband, with many “marrying down’’ to men who earn less or are less educated than they are. Gottlieb blames feminism for messing up her love life by instructing her that a single woman could “have it all.” Yet the inability to compromise isn’t a feminist trait; it’s an individual character flaw. Gottlieb also gets her statistics wrong, said Jessica Grose in Slate.com. It’s true that the percentage of women who remain single is rising, but most of them are not picky professionals. The women who aren’t finding husbands didn’t go to college or even graduate from high school. Surveys reveal another fact not mentioned by Gottlieb: Married women are more likely to be unhappy than their single counterparts.

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Gottlieb deserves all the fury she’s stirred up, said Anna North in Jezebel.com. Seething with “bizarre’’ anger, Marry Him was “the most unpleasant reading experience I’ve had in the last five years.” Its core assumption is that women should settle for any “socially acceptable” partner, rather than find a soul mate. By harping on the specter of the decent but dull guy who got away, Gottlieb revives a myth as chilling and old-fashioned as The Scarlet Letter—“how dangerous it is for women to make even one mistake.”