Foreverland
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A Recommended Read from: Good Morning America • Good Housekeeping • Esquire • Shondaland • Atlanta Journal-Constitution • The Week • Lit Hub • Publishers Weekly An illuminating, poignant, and savagely funny examination of modern marriage from Ask Polly advice columnist Heather Havrilesky If falling in love is the peak of human experience, then marriage is the slow descent down that mountain, on a trail built from conflict, compromise, and nagging doubts. Considering the limited economic advantages to marriage, the deluge of other mate options a swipe away, and the fact that almost half of all marriages in the United States end in divorce anyway, why do so many of us still chain ourselves to one human being for life? In Foreverland, Heather Havrilesky illustrates the delights, aggravations, and sublime calamities of her marriage over the span of fifteen years, charting an unpredictable course from meeting her one true love to slowly learning just how much energy is required to keep that love aflame. This refreshingly honest portrait of a marriage reveals that our relationships are not simply “happy” or “unhappy,” but something much murkier—at once unsavory, taxing, and deeply satisfying. With tales of fumbled proposals, harrowing suburban migrations, external temptations, and the bewildering insults of growing older, Foreverland is a work of rare candor and insight. Havrilesky traces a path from daydreaming about forever for the first time to understanding what a tedious, glorious drag forever can be.
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I've loved Havrilesky's advice column, Ask Polly, for a long time, and was further intrigued about Foreverland when it kicked up a shitstorm of misogyny on the internet (https://www.romper.com/entertainment/heather-havrilesky-foreverland-the-view). It's a great example of how people can take an excerpt and basically willfully misinterpret the entire, much larger and more nuance work based on the excerpt to suit their own devices. ANYWAY, Foreverland is extremely funny, self-reflective, brave, and ultimately very romantic.
There is a nostalgic comfort in reading Heather Havrilesky. She of the immediately recognizable blogger voice which is both a blessing and a curse. For me she is forever stuck in the 90's — I imagine her big headed comic avatar as rendered by Terry Colon at Suck.com opining on the tragedy of marriage. It is a beautiful disaster, a tornado of emotion, a sinkhole of nagging doubts, a glorious drag. And Havrilesky wastes no time weighing in on her phlegmy, walking heap of laundry that she chose to marry 15 years ago when an emboldened fan, clearly overstepping the parasocial boundaries of online fandom, emailed her a mash note. Suddenly she finds herself in the suburbs with two kids and obsessing over the possibility of a tiny infidelity.
And it's all achingly familiar with the gnashing of teeth, petulant griping, murderous thoughts and another example for good comedic measure. It is the classic sitcom setup where amidst the chaos you imagine the action frozen in place and the author quipping “you're probably wondering how I got here”. Havrilesky eventually comes around to the understanding that she is certainly with her favourite human on the planet before dashing off for another round of hijinks.
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