Book of the Week: Scenes from Married Life

I know this is a little late…but here is last week’s BotW. Scenes from Married Life is by William Cooper. I picked up a worn-out copy for one quid at Spitalfields Market in London. I initially enjoyed it because of Cooper’s city setting - every street, park, and train station name Cooper uses in his book caused me to bubble up with love for Londontown. In the end, however, Cooper turns out to be a rather persnickety, totally sexist, slighly racist, and thoroughly dull narrator. He smugly describes his success with matrimony but, given the choice, I’d choose singledom over his boring, sickeningly sweet version of married life anyday. Probably the most British book I’ve ever read:

“I may also take this opening to observe that in my experience there is nobody like an American for summing up on the spot exactly how expensive a restaurant is.”