GROWN-UP MARRIAGE: What We Know, Wish We Had Known and Still Need to Know About Being Married

Viorst's comprehensive exploration of all things nuptial should be required reading for any betrothed who don't have a plainspeaking veteran to give them the lowdown on what happens when the honeymoon is over. Some of her topics—sex, in-laws, fighting—are standard fare for a book like this. Others, such as a look at the ho-hum ordinariness of daily married life and an overview of how kids change a couple, are more renegade in their honesty and clearly the product of Viorst's own 42 years of married wisdom. For example, how many matrimonial neophytes are truly honest about feeling competitive with their mates? "Such competition [doesn't] necessarily happen only in troubled marriages," writes Viorst. "Just as brothers and sisters vie with each other to be their parents' best-loved child, so may husbands and wives—in their wish to be best or first or most—engage in a marital version of sibling rivalry." Readers should be warned that the author is, in some ways, a product of her generation. It's not hard to detect Viorst's disdain for newfangled practices like living together before marriage and attachment parenting, but for the most part she presents an evenhanded picture of the choices modern couples face. (Jan. 13)