A marriage memoir from the bestselling author of Bringing Up Bébé

On the eve of her fiftieth birthday, Pamela Druckerman’s life has stalled. She was in her early thirties when she moved to Paris, married a dashing fellow journalist, and became a celebrated author. Yet now, it’s her husband who churns out a book a year and wears earplugs around the house. Her adolescent children are more French than American, and her Parisian neighbors haven’t gotten any more welcoming. Once a prolific writer, she has slipped in status to her family’s head of purchasing and quality control.

Tired of feeling unappreciated – and tempted by an unexpected offer from a man from her past – Druckerman decides to try on the famously flexible French approach to monogamy (“What is fidelity, really? Isn’t it to be true to yourself?”). She grants herself a one-off fiftieth birthday present: a secret afternoon with “the banker.” She feels alive in her body for the first time in years yet conflicted as the tryst spins into an affair. Seeking a safer outlet for her passion, she becomes a devoted tennis player, trouncing Parisian housewives on Luxembourg Garden’s courts. Even her husband starts to notice.

With disarming honesty, Druckerman reflects that “Even in middle age, exciting doors fling open, and you allow yourself to walk through them.” This is a deeply funny and intimate account of one woman’s passage, and a bold exploration of the rules of modern marriage.

Pamela Druckerman is a journalist and the author of five books including Bringing Up Bébé, which has been translated into thirty-one languages and optioned as a feature film. She wrote the Dress Code column for The Economist’s 1843 magazine and a monthly column about France for The New Your Times, where she won an Emmy and an Overseas Press Club award. Her work has also appeared in The Atlantic, Harper’s Magazine, The New York Review of Books, and The Wall Street Journal.

‘This book is a celebration of aging and self-discovery and even of matrimony (if you squint your eyes). I guarantee it will make you laugh and make you think and, quite possibly, cheat on your spouse. It’s Pamela Druckerman’s most intimate book yet and also just so much fun to read.’－Nathan Englander, author of For the Relief of Unbearable Urges