Items related to Otherwise Engaged : a Novel
"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.
"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.
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Review:
After 18 months of dating, hemming, hawing, begging, badgering, and threatening--as well as performing "really sincere fellatio"--the heroine of Otherwise Engaged has finally finagled an engagement ring. Eve seems confident that Michael, "the epitome of a Nice Jewish Man," is the person she wants to spend her life with. Yet she nearly kills herself soon after the celebratory dinner, staring at her newly acquired rock while speeding along a San Francisco freeway. And she may kill Michael, too, but not accidentally: "Michael leaves his socks on the floor when he takes off his shoes after work. This used to be fine. But now a sock on the floor isn't just a sock on the floor. It's a sock on the floor for the rest of my life."
From the Publisher:
Suzanne Finnamore's comic novel chronicles the happy couple's year-long engagement--which, to judge from Eve's Valium intake, is about 11 months too long. Eve and Michael bicker over every last detail: whether to hire a professional photographer or one of Michael's advertising-director buddies; which one of them wastes more money; who used up the last can of chicken stock and didn't add it to the shopping list. At 36, Eve throws more tantrums than the average toddler, and Michael's moodiness and problems with his ex-wife certainly don't help. The result is one drama-queen dilemma after another, none of them much ameliorated by Eve's slapstick sessions with "a seventy-year-old Marin County prominent Jungian."
Eve's troubles are primarily self-induced, of course, and the lush life she leads as a lavishly compensated advertising copywriter makes it hard to regard her as a tragic figure. Still, Otherwise Engaged is worth a quick read by any anxious bride-to-be who's delaying that inevitable appointment with Martha Stewart's premarital to-do checklist. --Erica Jorgensen
"Suzanne Finnamore has written a true modern bride. For any single woman who has white-dress-and-veil anxiety this book provides a refreshing relief. Otherwise Engaged is a witty, intelligent portrait of a contemporary woman coping with the oldest fashioned of woes. A charming, funny, and delightfully realisitic novel. Bridget Jones may have a diary but Suzanne Finnamore's got the ring."
--Wendy Wasserstein
--Wendy Wasserstein
"Suzanne Finnamore's novel is wonderful-so funny and charming and smart that I felt bitter that someone else got to write it." --Anne Lamott
"Otherwise Engaged is smart, good-hearted, and marvelously witty."
--Susan Isaacs
"Starting where Bridget Jones's Diary and Animal Husbandry left off, Finnamore's debut novel humorously chronicles one woman's life of limbo, now that she's achieved an engagement ring. . . .Her energetically told story, set in a vibrantly realized San Francisco, should appeal to anyone who can appreciate a cool, clever intelligence capable of discerning the zaniness of the purgatory known as engagement."
--Publishers Weekly
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- PublisherKnopf
- Publication date1999
- ISBN 10 0375406522
- ISBN 13 9780375406522
- BindingHardcover
- Edition number1
- Number of pages224
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OTHERWISE ENGAGED
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Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., New York, NY, U.S.A.
(1999)
ISBN 10: 0375406522
ISBN 13: 9780375406522
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Book Description Hardcover. Condition: New. Dust Jacket Condition: Fine. First Edition. For every woman who has ever dreamed of being 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--OTHERWISE ENGAGED is a wickedly funny first novel about the excruciating ritual otherwise known as modern marriage. New, unread copy, in fine, mylar-protected dust jacket. FF. Seller Inventory # 3336
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OTHERWISE ENGAGED : A NOVEL
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Book Description Condition: New. New. In shrink wrap. Looks like an interesting title! 0.95. Seller Inventory # Q-0375406522
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