Only made it 40% in then gave up ( )

With one foot in farce and the other in realism, Carkeet dissects a modern marriage from a dispassionate but never disinterested viewpoint. Jeremy Cook, a lovelorn Ph.D. linguist, accepts a job with the mysterious Pillow Agency (founder: Roy Pillow), which "embeds" researchers in troubled marriages to try to save them. Cook, armed with only the vaguest instructions, is duly sent to live with a thirty-something couple in St Louis. Are their troubles based in language? Not really, although they seem to have as much trouble communicating as any other couple, and Cook's analyses of their conversation patterns can be surprisingly spot-on. Over the course of a week, the root of their problem is given a name, Cook's own most pressing problem is solved, and things are looking tentatively hopeful for all of them. But the journey there is full of episodes both hilarious and tense.

I doubt I've read a funnier book that wasn't complete nonsense. The stage is set early with Cook's absurd miscommunications with the bizarre Roy Pillow, and Beth Wilson's two-word answer to the boilerplate question "Who usually initiates sex?" almost had me on the floor. Yet while the pace never flagged, it never became wearying, and everything wrapped up at the end in as satisfying a way as a good meal. While I can't agree with Carkeet's analysis of "The Horror" at the bottom of every troubled marriage, I root for the Wilsons, wish Cook the best, and wish I could find more books like this. ( )

This is my favorite of the three books in a trilogy about a rather pathetic but likeable linguist. I just picked it up in a bookstore once years ago and I have given many copies as gifts. It is really interesting how different tastes are in books. I absolutely treasure this book and have read it and the others (Double Negative,The Error of Our Ways) many times. It's surprising to me to read negative reviews about them. Maybe I love them because I read this one first, before Double Negative, and I was hooked.
There were a couple of disappointments that I can't really talk about without giving away plots. But these stories aren't really plot-driven; they are character studies about Jeremy and all the goof balls he runs into. Give Full Catastrophe a chance; maybe you will love it as I do. ( )