Foreverland : On the Divine Tedium of Marriage, by Heather Havrilesky

I have great news: I gave birth to a daughter in January! 💕

I am now a mother, and I can confirm that the clichés are true; my life has changed completely (there is now a little being who is the star of my solar system), the love I have for my baby is unparalleled and absolutely unconditional, and she is an inexhaustible source of joy.

Since January, I've also been reading less, and I'm more selective in what I read, because I have to protect my emotionally charged mother's heart. Gone, in particular, are the damn novels about the Second World War, or anything where people suffer. And since I'm never in front of my computer anymore, I'm even more selective about what I decide to list here.

So I won't tell you about Inkheartby Cornelia Funke, a children's book with a very interesting premise (a young girl discovers that her father has the power to take book characters out of their world and make them appear in ours), but which stretches on incredibly long. I won't mention Belovedby Toni Morrison either, which begins with the burial of a two-year-old baby (my little heart cried "Next!"), nor of Primeval and Other Times by Olga Tokarczuk, which I not only didn't understand the point of, but which traumatized me with a scene in which a mother and her infant are killed by a Nazi. I won't even mention The Royal Game by Stefan Zweig, even though I loved it and I think you would too.

However, I really want to tell you about Foreverland, by Heather Havrilesky. It arrived in my life just in time, and even though I finished it weeks ago, it's still running through my head because it touched me so much.

Summary

Perhaps you know the author from her "Ask Polly" column, in which she gives advice to those who want it (examples here). She's used to pretending she's a reference on how to live well, when, let's face it, she's no more qualified than anyone else. In Foreverland, however, she discovers with us the life of a married woman with children as if she were living it for the first time, from the moment she met her husband to‘her recap of their relationship, almost 15 years later. All with disarming honesty and humor.

Impressions

I'm not married. But after almost seven years with the same guy, and a baby on top of that, I feel more justified in saying that I'm part of that gang: that gang of real adults, who have responsibilities and have to pretend they know what they're doing. So for me, this book came at just the right time.

I don't know how I'd translate the title in French, but I love this formulation: "Divine Tedium". Staying with someone for a long time is fabulous: you get to know them as a person, you're no longer constantly afraid of displeasing them, you can settle down and make plans. But it can also be repetitive, boring and frustrating. Havrilesky talks about her otherwise intelligent, sexy and caring husband in terms that are often quite harsh: she compares him to a pile of dirty laundry (smelly, useless and barely conscious) before his morning coffee; she describes his marriage proposal as one of the moments when she loved him least in her life; she admits to finding his work completely uninteresting; and describes his unscrupulous body noises. Even the best of us have flaws, don't we.

But what really got me was the story of the birth of her first daughter. Her husband, who already had a child, had assured her that a baby was great, and that they were going to have a lot of fun. And she realizes that this is true, despite all the inconveniences one can imagine.

That's what I liked about this book: it's graphic, but not romanticized. Sometimes you hate the love of your life. Sometimes you decide to have a baby even though you know it comes with a potentially very painful pregnancy, a delivery that can feel like torture, and hours and hours of screaming, often in the middle of the night. Sometimes we're forced to make our daughter poop in a plastic bag in the car, which ends up being the best part of the trip (I loved this scene). Sometimes our best friend is also the person who gets on our nerves the most.

If we want the good, we have to accept the bad. It's up to us to decide if it's worth it. Clearly, Havrilesky has decided it is, and so have I.