(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.
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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.”
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feature For a famous memoirist, Susanna Kaysen is highly ambivalent about sharing details about her life.
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feature Robert Wagner “seems to have known anybody who was anybody in Hollywood.”
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Book of the week: Astoria: John Jacob Astor and Thomas Jefferson’s Lost Pacific Empire by Peter Stark
feature The tale of Astoria’s rise and fall turns out to be “as exciting as anything in American history.”