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'Him Her Him Again The End of Him' by Patricia Marx

The former Saturday Night Live writer turns her sharp tongue on fiction

By Alexandra Edwards
Published: March 6th, 2007 | 6:03pm

Him Her Him Again The End of Him isn't nearly as pretentious as it sounds.

Admittedly, it's a hard sell. A book about a doomed ten-year relationship between a grad school dropout and a pompous PhD, with an experimental-sounding title, set in posh locations such as Cambridge and New York City - it sounds a little like chick-lit for the hyper-educated crowd.

But rest assured, that's not what this book is. Instead, Marx takes all of these elements, and then some, and makes them the targets of her dead-on humorous wit. She's particularly funny in the first section of the book, as she subtly lambastes the academic world and its inhabitants, a population that includes her nameless narrator. "Two months had passed since I'd seen my advisor, Geoffrey Guppy, a genial man in his sixties," explains the narrator, "known for his work in the tribal politics of Guinea-Bissau and also in the sociology of what transpires during the first minute of conversation in different cultures." Later, she points out, a little snidely, that while her thesis title was a mere 47 words long, another student's was 104.

The destructive love affair at the center of the story could, in less capable hands, drag everything down, but here it's executed exceptionally well. Marx's passive, self-deprecating, and yet wholly likable narrator is the key to this success. Her conversational tone allows the narrative to be satirical while still being friendly. She talks straight to the reader, commenting on her story, herself, and how the reader might be feeling about the whole thing. This metatextual quality weaves its way through the book, as the tone becomes more serious and the narrator's misfortune comes to the fore.

The story's end might be called "touching," but never in a saccharine way. Marx reserves just enough humor for the last moments to keep it all consistent: consistently funny, consistently smart, and consistently good.