Love's labors

This could be the story of hundreds of uncoupled young couples. Dan Roche's first marriage was anomalous in typically late-twentieth-century ways. Dan and his first wife married young. They never quite settled down during their eight-year marriage, spending about half of their time apart, in job and grad school bits and pieces. They hyphenated their last names. And when their marriage was over, Dan and his first wife and his second wife went out for Indian together.

Love's Labors is a deeply personal yet universal memoir of a modern marriage. For what lingers is not how different this marriage was, but how common, how full of everyday anxieties and hopes.