Against Love

Engagingly acerbic . . . extremely funny. . . . A deft indictment of the marital ideal, as well as a celebration of the dissent that constitutes adultery, delivered in pointed daggers of prose. -New Yorker It's about time someone blew apart our idealistic notions about relationships and love. -New York Post A timely, entertaining cherry bomb of a book. . . . Smart, witty and withering. -The Boston Globe Wonderfully clever, deliciously written. . . . Kipnis blends journalistic pizazz and philosophical nerve . . . Whether you agree or not, Kipnis' crackling colloquial style keeps Against Love rollicking forward, often hilariously. . . . It's hard to imagine even the fiercest champion of wedded bliss not enjoying the provocations of this book. -Philadelphia Inquirer If you think of 'family values' as something more, better and different from simply loving the people in your family, avoid this book for fear of apoplexy. -The Washington Post Reading Against Love, I felt invigorated half the time and plunged into the deepest, most morose pit of self-pitying despair the rest of it-in other words, I felt as if I were in love. This seems to have been Kipnis's aim. -Salon In this ragingly witty yet contemplative look at the discontents of domestic and erotic relationships, Kipnis . . . combines portions of the slashing sexual contrarianism of Mailer, the scathing antidomestic wit of early Roseanne Barr and the coolly analytical aesthetics of early Sontag. . . . With a razor-sharp intelligence and a gleeful sense of irony, Kipnis dismantles the myths of romance surrounding monogamy. -Publisher's Weekly Wittily invigorating. . . . [Kipnis] possesses the gleeful, viperish wit of a Dorothy Parker and the energetic charisma of a cheerleader. She is dead-on about the everyday exhaustion a relationship can produce. -Slate A person would need a heart of stone not to rejoice at the drubbing [Kipnis] delivers. . . . Funny and astute . . . much of the writing is informed and bracing, amplifying ideas about social control derived from Engels, Marx, Nietzsche, Freud, Weber, Raymond Williams, Foucault and Adam Phillips. -Chicago Tribune [Kipnis is] a talented social satirist. -Weekly Standard Against Love is a wonderfully provocative book, daring and incisive, written with verve and no small amount of humor. It raises a thousand questions most of us lack the courage to ask, about domestic life and even the meaning of the human enterprise, while remaining at every instant a delight to read. -Scott Turow Kipnis's treatise reads like a brisk, sophisticated novel about the beginning, middle and end of an adulterous affair. . . . [A] bravura book. -Times Literary Supplement (London) This book is trouble . . . and the worst thing is that Kipnis is so convincing. A vastly entertaining and smart work of social criticism. Kipnis demonstrates her brilliance at the [polemic] form . . . playing a heretic in the chapel of love. An unsettling and witty deconstruction of love and marriage. -NPR, Fresh Air