Thoughts from a Queen-Sized Bed

'This is aimed at anyone interested in a thoughtful, humorous, poignant and honest look at love and marriage and family. Since not one of us can lay claim truly to being a specialist in this field - we are all amateurs when it comes to matters of the heart - this book is, then, for us all' - Bret Lott, author of "Jewel, an Oprah Book Club Selection". 'It was a cathartic delight to read Mimi Schwartz's clear-eyed, unflinching "Thoughts from a Queen-Sized Bed". Rarely has middle-class dailiness in all its vagaries been so well rendered without agenda or cynicism. This is a survivor's book, lovingly mediated and written' - Stephen Dunn, author of "Different Hours", 2001 Pulitzer Prize Winner for Poetry. 'Marriage and monogamy are merely the jumping-off point for Mimi Schwartz's lyrical and evocative meditation on commitment - not only to family, but to memory itself. Beautifully structured, this book ripples and reverberates in surprising ways' - Mary Morris, author of "Nothing to Declare". 'I laughed and sighed and loved reading "Thoughts from a Queen-Sized Bed" from start to finish. Schwartz, who is a writer, professor, wife, mother, and friend, resists stereotypes of class, gender, and age to find or make, in lovely, clear prose, the sweetness of life for her audience. Do yourself a favor. Read this book' - Hilda Raz, author of "Divine Honors" and "Trans". In this startlingly funny and wonderfully honest book of essays, Mimi Schwartz describes what it means to be married for almost forty years. She writes with a keen and amused eye about growing up in an immigrant Jewish family, coming of age in New York in the 1950s, marrying her high school beau, and then arriving at feminist consciousness in the 1970s like so many others of her generation. But unlike many of her contemporaries who left first marriages for independence, Schwartz stayed loyal to her marriage. With refreshing candor Schwartz describes the ongoing challenge of marriage, where success is never without ambivalence and humor. Her essays are wise and warm without being sentimental, and the characters in Schwartz's world are quirky and as charming, well rounded, and complex as those found in any novel. Mimi Schwartz is a professor of writing at Richard Stockton College of New Jersey. Her books include "Writer's Craft", "Teacher's Art: Teaching What We Know" and "Writing for Many Roles".