On Marriage

"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 * On Marriage turns away from the personal in pursuit of a more far-reaching understanding of marriage as a philosophical, cultural and political phenomenon . . . Baum is an erudite and entertaining guide through the landscape of marriage, bringing a lively intellectual rigour to changing attitudes on matters of religion, feminism, parenting and sexuality . . . She draws on a formidably broad frame of reference, from Kant to Fleabag via George Eliot and Nora Ephron, and any number of intriguing detours through less familiar literary and cinematic representations . . . On Marriage offers a fascinating exploration of an institution that, for better or worse, ""continues to shape and carry our human story"" -- Stephanie Merritt * Guardian * This delightful, acrobatic book is funny, thought-provoking and rigorous at the same time. An effervescent and timely meditation on marriage * Darian Leader * Philosophically and emotionally smart. 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 Exploring her own marriage has given Baum a unique vantage point from which to investigate the private intricacies of other people's arrangements . . . Baum is not interested in the rights or wrongs of marriage, only its varied manifestations and meanings . . . 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 * Rarely has the subject of marriage been attended to with such intelligence, breadth of reading and insight, but also with such scrutiny and hope. Baum is hopeful about marriage, but also honest and anxious about it. She is committed to its contradictions and complexities. There is doubt and humility, as well as a quiet ardour to her analysis -- Hisham Matar 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"