BOOK OF THE YEAR 2023 ACCORDING TO THE NEW YORKER AND KIRKUS

'Devorah Baum is a visionary writer. Her intellectual depth, her emotional precision and her searing insight can only be gathered under an old fashioned word: wisdom' Zadie Smith

A shining exploration of why we marry from writer and academic Devorah Baum

For better or worse, for richer for poorer, till death us do part - we've always done it and we're still doing it. Of all our cultural institutions, marriage is the most ancient, but also the most puzzling.

In this compelling and delightful book, Devorah Baum examines the many meanings we have given to marriage, interweaving the personal with insights from a host of writers, artists and thinkers.

From Freud to Ferrante, and One Thousand and One Nights to Fleabag, she looks at marriage in all of its forms - from act of love to leap of faith, and asks: what are we really doing when we say 'I do'?

Both celebration and critique, On Marriage is a guide like no other to the landscape of marriage.

'A hugely thought-provoking, witty, warm tour around every significant writer and thinker on love to have emerged since Adam and Eve' Alain de Botton

About the Author
Devorah Baum is the author of Feeling Jewish and The Jewish Joke: an essay with examples (less essay, more examples). With Josh Appignanesi she is co-director, producer and performer of the films The New Man and Husband, which investigate the intimate dynamics of the filmmakers' own marriage. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, Guardian, Tate Etc and the Financial Times. She is Associate Professor of English Literature at the University of Southampton.

Reviews
Baum is an erudite and entertaining guide through the landscape of marriage . . . from Kant to Fleabag via George Eliot and Nora Ephron . . . [On Marriage is] a fascinating exploration of an institution that, for better or worse, "continues to shape and carry our human story" -- Stephanie Merritt * Guardian *
On the subject of conversation and its role in marriage Baum is . . . at her most resonant. . . . This is smart and right. . . . There is more in marriage than may be dreamt of in our philosophies * Wall Street Journal *
Baum is a master at unpicking cliches. She pushes at the boundaries of marriage as a framework for conceiving of ourselves in relation to others . . . Her nimble new work selects and analyses artistic renderings of marriage across philosophy, television, and literature - including work by the novelist Taffy Brodesser-Akner, the theorist Slavoj Zizek, and the screenwriter Phoebe Waller-Bride * The New Yorker, 'The Best Books We Read This Week' *
Rarely has the subject of marriage been attended to with such intelligence, breadth of reading and insight, but also with such scrutiny and hope -- Hisham Matar
A comprehensively researched, wry examination of the many dimensions of marriage and how it has evolved * Kirkus *
Exploring her own marriage has given Baum a unique vantage point from which to investigate the private intricacies of other people's arrangements . . . Her ability to sit in the midst of those arguments and unpick their various strands makes her work compelling, as does her willingness to self-interrogate * Times *
This delightful, acrobatic book is funny, thought-provoking and rigorous at the same time. An effervescent and timely meditation on marriage * Darian Leader *
Devorah Baum brings her literary understandings, psychoanalytic scholarship and great aplomb to the marriage conundrum. It's very funny too. Who wouldn't want to marry Devorah? -- Susie Orbach
On Marriage is characterized by this kind of agile curiosity . . . Baum holds [marriage] up as a seduction -- Rebecca Mead * The New Yorker *
Because marriage doesn't always bring out the best in us, it makes us wonder what the best in us might be. It is part of the extraordinary wit and wisdom of Baum's remarkable book to show us what kind of romance, and experiment in living, we have wanted marriage to be -- Adam Phillips
Everything you thought you knew about conjugal beds, secrets, feuds, confessions, triangulations and solaces will be pleasurably complicated by Devorah Baum's wryly insightful tell - all regarding the infinite perversity of marriage - including her own, mine, and probably yours -- Laura Kipnis
On Marriage is a hugely thought-provoking, witty, warm tour around every significant writer and thinker on love to have emerged since Adam and Eve. Baum is a charming guide to the wisdom of her inspiring judiciously curated cohort * Alain de Botton *
Baum looks at marriage from multiple angles, legal and political, social and narrative, its interminability and its dailiness . . . it can be funny or tragic or both. Baum's methodology is to look at what is missing - a philosophy of marriage, a clear idea of what this dominant structure is and how it influences lives. Lovely * The White Review *



Book Information
ISBN 9780241998021
Author Devorah Baum
Format Paperback
Page Count 336
Imprint Penguin Books Ltd
Publisher Penguin Books Ltd
Weight(grams) 235g
Dimensions(mm) 198mm * 129mm * 22mm