Still Life with Husband [Hardcover]

Lauren Fox (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 6, 2007

Meet Emily Ross, thirty years old, a freelance writer, and personal advocate for cake at breakfast time. With ringlets of shoulder-length hair prone to frizz and pretty brown eyes, Emily has been described in the following ways: “dramatic-looking,” “striking,” “interesting,” and once, “Venezuelan.” (She is not.)

Meet Emily’s husband, Kevin, a sweet technical writer with a passion for small appliances. Kevin once cried during Little Women, is secretly afraid of raisins because they look like mouse droppings, and is slowly driving Emily completely insane with his daily pleas for procreation.

Enter David, a sexy young reporter for the local alternative newspaper. With his longish floppy hair and rough unshaven cheeks, David smells like air and wind, and Emily kind of wants to lick him.

In this generous, heartfelt, and often hilarious novel of marriage and friendship, Lauren Fox explores the baffling human heart and the dangers of getting what you wish for.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Yes, it's an affair novel, but file this adroit but placid debut under chick lit for early marrieds—the ones who are not sure they want to be on the baby-house-'burbs track. At 30, Emily Ross is a Milwaukee freelance writer with a part-time job as assistant editor at a medical journal called Male Reproduction and a marriage to "steady, staid" Kevin, a technical writer she met in college. Kevin, "innocent and intolerable," wants a baby and a house. Emily is ambivalent and bored. A few pages in, Emily meets David Keller, a dark, good-looking writer/editor at the local alternative newspaper, and starts an affair. Things, as expected, do not go well, but Fox's voice is steady, moving easily between comedy and drama. Her emotionally literate delineation of character and relationship give the book texture, with Emily's relationship with her best friend, Meg, emerging as the book's most resonant. Fox draws just the right tension out of Emily's mix of honesty and self-delusion, reflection and romance, with an undercurrent of a sort of left-handed hope. For anyone who's lived through a relationship drama, though, Emily will have a decidedly entitled, gee-whiz quality that's hard to take. (Feb. 7)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

In Fox's debut novel about the constraints of marriage and the lure of infidelity, Emily Ross, married for nine years to the kind and decent Kevin, is feeling suffocated by her husband's desire to buy a house in the suburbs and start a family. When she meets a handsome newspaper editor in the local Starbucks, she's so busy cracking jokes, she forgets to mention one small detail--she's married. Two dates later, she finally admits her marital status, but, after expressing the requisite misgivings, the two engage in an intense affair. Then the lovers' remorse and guilt start to kick in, and Fox's narrative starts to drag as page after page is given over to the angst-ridden details. Fox covers familiar ground that has been done better by, for example, Tom Perrotta in Little Children (2004) and Lolly Winston in Happiness Sold Separately (2006). Still, there seems to be a strong demand for fiction dealing with the vicissitudes of marriage, and Fox has a particularly engaging sense of humor. Joanne Wilkinson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 272 pages
• Publisher: Knopf; First Edition. states edition (February 6, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0307264912
• ISBN-13: 978-0307264916
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.5 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (29 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #562,133 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars An ironic, moving, laugh-out-loud funny take on marriage and fidelity..., August 31, 2007

By 

Cassie W. (Ohio) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Still Life with Husband (Hardcover)

STILL LIFE WITH HUSBAND, the debut novel by Milwaukeean Lauren Fox, introduces readers to Emily Ross, 30-year-old freelance writer, assistant editor of a male reproduction journal (her boss, amusingly, is named Dick), and discontented wife. Her husband is Kevin, a sweet, boring technical writer who is desperate to move to the suburbs and have a baby. Emily's not sure she's ready for such a big step -- and when she meets handsome writer David Keller, she starts to think she may never be ready for that kind of life with Kevin. Inevitably, and predictably, Emily and David embark on an illicit affair.

STILL LIFE WITH HUSBAND is a novel about one woman's choices, and the lasting effects those choices have on the people who love her. Emily Ross is, as one of the previous reviewers mentioned, one of the most engaging chick lit heroines since Bridget Jones. The whole novel is written from her first-person perspective, and the voice Fox gives to her is ironic, self-reflective, and incredibly witty. You will respond to Emily in some way -- either positively or negatively, but you WILL respond to her. Look at the other reviews here if you don't believe me! Yes, Emily is selfish and adulterous; but she's also a good, generous friend and smart enough to know that she very well could be screwing up her life. That's precisely what makes her such a believable character -- the balance of darkness and light in her psyche. None of us are purely good or bad, and Emily reflects that utterly human quality brilliantly. A 30-year-old woman whose dream is to write love poems for fish (and yes, there are a couple of poems in the text for your pure reading enjoyment)? I mean, how could you not love her, at least a little bit, despite her disloyalty to her husband?

Emily is backed up by an endearing cast of characters, most notably her best friend Meg and her boss, Dick. A couple of the characters late in the novel seem a little cartoonish, but Fox manages to make even those seem believable. The relationships portrayed in the novel really ring true -- they are sometimes heartbreaking, sometimes euphoric, but always reflecting real life. A couple of the events in the book left me unhappy and wishing for a different result for the characters, but I think that's just a sign of a really talented writer.

What I liked most about the book was its overall light-heartedness and unexpected sense of hope. I can't believe how hard I laughed in many parts of this book! The ending was somewhat frustrating, but it also made perfect, inevitable sense. I hope Lauren Fox has done enough with STILL LIFE WITH HUSBAND to distinguish herself from the multitudes of chick lit writers out there -- she's definitely got something special and wonderfully different to offer.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars LOOOVE THIS BOOK, June 4, 2008

By 

LUV MY BABY (SC) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Still Life with Husband (Vintage Contemporaries) (Paperback)

I think anyone married for a long time can relate to this book. I loved it. I HATE to read but if I could find more writers like her, I would be such a book worm. I laughed out loud, I got anxious, I could really feel what she was going through. It is worth the read,
I was on VACATION, and spent a lot of time reading this b/c I just couldn't put it down.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars 100% pure delicousness, May 24, 2007

By 

carolyn7000 (Minneapolis, MN, United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Still Life with Husband (Hardcover)

I found this book to be absolutely pleasurable and delicious from start to finish. I hated having to put it down when life intervened, and would find myself intensely looking forward to getting back to it. To me, that's the mark of an excellent book.

The writing in STILL LIFE is funny and sharp; it has an edge of realism that is fresh and helps to create a complex, believable world. This life-like sensibility is also why I found Emily to be such a believable and likeable character. I get so tired of pure and good main characters whose only fault is quirkiness, because that's not the reality of the human heart. The human heart is both light and dark, both generous and selfish, etc. That's what this book so richly captures. Some people react negatively to that sort of thing, but I find it refreshing and mature and interesting. I was on the edge of my seat as the events here played out. Very fun.

There's a lot of great humor here, too, and hilarious everyday observations that ring so true. And the end made total sense. A Hollywood ending would've felt false; this one felt surprising yet inevitable and 100% genuine.

It is such a breath of fresh air to find a book that is so engaging and funny and real all at the same time--kind of a cross between Lorrie Moore and Jane Austen. I can't wait for FOX's next book!