KISS ME IN THE CORAL LOUNGE

Life and marriage can be difficult and hilarious, as these short essays demonstrate.

The chapter titles in this collection by novelist Ellis give a good indication of the tone throughout—e.g., “My Husband Snores and Yours Will Too,” “Slumber Party Side Effects May Include…,” and “How To Talk About Touchy Subjects.” Most of the pieces are whimsical with an edge, with the author holding forth on topics such as her marriage to a Greek American husband, her Alabama upbringing, her life among the New York literati, her fondness for grudges (“I love my shit list. If I had the nerve to type it, I’d laminate it”), and more. In the chapter on her husband’s snoring, Ellis chronicles her attempts to block it out. One tactic was to have him sleep in their TV room, which they call the Coral Lounge because “we painted it a delirious shade of coral that borders on Starburst candy orange.” In a memorable piece on wedding calamities, the author writes that she was late for her own wedding because she couldn’t get a taxi in midtown Manhattan, and two nights before the ceremony, “the Greek restaurant where we’d booked our reception had burnt to the ground.” In “A Woman Under the Influence of Joan Collins’s Dynasty,” Ellis notes that she binge-watched the prime-time soap because “I want to live like a 1980s TV villainess.” As with many essay collections, some lines are excellent while others feel forced. Unfortunately, this one has more than its share of clunkers. For example, “I want a sex drive that rivals a Chevrolet dealership.” This book is for readers who appreciate passages like this one about the revitalization of the author’s sex life after her husband started taking Viagra: “How can I put this? I haven’t seen Star Wars since the 1970s, but I know enough to recognize a lightsaber in my hand.”

Hit-or-miss comic essays on marriage and its discontents.