Book Review: Wedding Toasts I’ll Never Give by Ada Calhoun

As the title of American author and columnist Ada Calhoun’s new book of essays, Wedding Toasts I’ll Never Give suggests, it’s unlikely you’ll hear any speeches quite like these at forthcoming nuptials.

Wincingly honest, there’s no place for soul mates and generic declarations of togetherness here. Instead, there’s resentment for missing flights, breaking bathroom taps and, more upsettingly, finding other people attractive – and coming clean about it.

If this sounds cynical, it’s not meant to be. By and large, Calhoun is pragmatically supportive of love and those who seek it out.

Her sweetest moments are those where she zones in on the minutiae of her marriage and being a parent, recalling family trips to a civil war enactment camp, huddling together to listen to an audiobook in a car.

Calhoun reserves her final essay in the series for the one speech she would give newlyweds. Hopeful, sensible and grounded in reality, it serves just as much guidance to those in long-term relationships to those embarking on them.