Book Description
What nobody tells you about getting engaged is he asks
you and you're delirious for about two days and then it
tapers. He asks you and you're running around telling grocery
clerks and ordering subscriptions to bride magazines and
discussing prong settings versus suspension settings, and
then after two days this ebullience passes. It is no longer
conceptual; you have the whole wedding to plan and from that
moment on the pressure builds.
"The ebullience comes back, two days before the
wedding. The boomerang effect. Something else no one tells
you about.
"They should parachute this information into the
major cities."
For every woman who has ever dreamed of getting married or
survived the pre-wedding hell of planning the big day; for
every man who has ever watched in horror as the woman he
loves mutates into a bride-to-be--a wickedly funny first
novel about the excruciating ritual otherwise known as modern
marriage.
Michael has finally asked Eve to marry him. It is tempting
to believe that everything is going according to plan. But
from her first anxiety-producing en- counter with Modern
Bride magazine to setting a date ("My impression is
that if you don't set a date, they stone you"), finding
a dress, ordering invitations ("I don't want the plain
envelopes. I want the white go-go boots. Everyone else has
them"), and the unrelenting chaos of life in the world
beyond the wedding, from the fights and resentment ("For
eighteen months I rubbed his back and made him soup and
performed really sincere fellatio and now I'm tired") to
the disconcerting realization that lately when she looks at
her fiance she hears the striking of a Chinese gong and the
words FOR THE REST OF YOUR LIFE echoing through her head, Eve
discovers that planning a wedding is fraught with unexpected
perils, and it's a long walk to the altar.
Otherwise Engaged is a wry, deliciously caustic
ride through the outsized rituals of an American wedding, and
a hilarious portrait of what happens to an otherwise
rational, intelligent woman when she begins to plan one.
