Helpful Score: 3
A puckishly Marxist harangue about monogamy and its discontents. Why, Kipnis wonders, has everything - particularly romance - become hard work? The best part (starting on page 84) is a comic, cumulatively horrifying litany of all the things you're not allowed to do once you enter the "domestic gulag" known as coupledom. On a more practical note, Kipnis suggests that it's high time we change our matrimonial customs to reflect the painfully obvious fact that lifelong commitment just isn't feasible for most people. "Why should the state license marriages, by the way?" she then asks. A darn good question.
