Melanie Shankle (blogger and author of Sparkly Green Earrings) puts a comic spin on the joys, challenges and irritations of marriage in The Antelope in the Living Room, a memoir detailing 16 years of the eventful--and sometimes uneventful--union of a Texas couple. Their life together includes a near-attack by a shark, home improvements and pest control gone awry, dieting, the perils of surgery, miscarriage, childbirth, in-laws and even the challenges of reconciling a joint checking account.
This opposites-attract love story, Shankle tells us, is "not like in the movies." Melanie first met her husband Perry at a college Bible study when she was nursing a broken heart. Friends first, the couple later married in the mid-1990s, when they were both in their 20s. She had spent years dreaming about wedding gowns and white picket fences, while he was always more focused on his Ford pickup truck and hunting. The implications of "for better or worse" are tested, and Shankle doesn't sugarcoat life after "I do." She employs witty, self-deprecating humor that elevates the mundane and shows how time deepens love and lends perspective, including an interesting riff on "young love" versus "old love."
The Christian values of the couple and subtle references to God and Biblical passages pepper some of these playful anecdotes of two ordinary people "deeply committed to the same thing" as they grow and change, recognizing the blessings of sharing the ups and downs of life in a good, solid marriage. --Kathleen Gerard, blogger at Reading Between the Lines