Harrison Scott Key’s latest book gives a tragi-comic take on the Christian humility required to stay married.
“What happened was, my wife for a billion years—the mother of our three daughters, a woman who’s spent just about every Sunday of her life in church—snuck off and found herself a boyfriend. … He has a decorative seashell collection and can’t even grow a beard. I am not making this up.”
So begins Harrison Scott Key’s third memoir How to Stay Married: The Most Insane Love Story Ever Told. If you’ve read his first two books The World’s Largest Man, which won the Thurber Prize for American Humor, and Congratulations, Who Are You Again? you may not be able to imagine one of the nation’s funniest writers exploring such a serious issue. Who writes a comedic memoir about their failed marriage?
But here’s the surprise: His book is about a failure that was redeemed—a marriage resurrected.
In many ways, How to Stay Married is Key’s most Christian memoir. He talks explicitly about his faith and makes clear that his story makes sense only if the Christian God is real. Just as Hosea fought for Gomer, Harrison fights for Lauren, his wife of 14 years.
As I was reading, I thought of all the times I had been blindsided by dissolved relationships. Before I was married, I was a bridesmaid ten times, and four of those ended in divorce before I had celebrated my tenth anniversary. At the start of the book, Key, too, admits that he would hear of other people’s divorces and say, “Wait. What?” But this time, he faces his wife’s request to end the relationship and has to say a very personal version of “Wait. What?”
He writes of these and other moments in their marriage with an authenticity, vulnerability, and …