How To Be a Husband

This book defies easy categorization. In it, Dowling, who writes a popular column for the British newspaper The Guardian, has collected his scattered musings on the role of the human male in modern marriage and molded them into something akin to a memoir. But because the author has chosen to hew roughly to the conventions of a self-help book to cement the mosaic together, the material is long on his personal philosophies and short on narrative. Dowling's humor is dry, self-deprecating, and ironic in the extreme, and his vignettes are absent entirely of warm, fuzzy moments. Unfortunately, his style at times demands patience from the reader; he has a penchant for explaining his tongue-in-cheek theories at a length that borders on tedious. Despite this tendency, Dowling's deadpan delivery, arresting metaphors, and blunt dissection of events for which a more reverential tone is usually held (e.g., marriage proposals, childbirth) are truly funny.