  More reading for the tanning booth Things My Girlfriend and I Have Argued About by Mil Millington Since we are on a mode of light summer reading, I thought this might be a nice little niblet to offer people to get them through the bleakness of July.
This title may seem familiar to those of you that have seen his website of the same name (I know that you all want me to post that site as a link--but you can google as well as I can, you lazy bastards) in which he lists all of the arguments that he and his partner have had over the minutiae of cohabitation. This book takes that theme (obviously) and gives it a plot. Pel and his girlfriend Ursula ( take a moment to figure out who has the worst name) live in England with their two young sons and spend a large amount of time getting on each other's nerves. This is that point where I am supposed to summarize the plot so you can all get a sense of what happened as I make my point about global themes and gender issues, but I hate summarizing, so I am going to directly what I liked and didn't like about the book. Millington has that great dry British humor that seems like its self-deprecating when its actually indicating that everyone else is an idiot. That is one of the strongest parts of the novel. He has good comic timing and a great way with dialogue that makes the real point of the book, (the couple's incessant fighting), well, funny.
In the beginning of the novel, I was a little uncomfortable about the bickering. Ursula (yes, she has the worst name) comes across horribly and you feel bad for Pel, who comes across like this browbeaten little man who's just trying to do the right thing. And then slowly, you realize he's an idiot too. You realize that they deserve each other in the truest sense of it all and finally, you realize that there constant arguing is really very sweet and that they really care about each other. In some ways, that's exactly why I liked this novel so much better than The Corrections by Franzen.
They had horrible relationships and you didn't feel sorry for them, you just felt bad that you had to know what it was about. TMG&IHAA is fun because there is something sweet about the feelings behind all the screaming. Another thing I really liked about TMG&IHAA is that Ursula is German and Pel is British and there are many fights about the differences between Germany and England. Though they live in England, there is this underlying sense that bad things only happen in England and Pel seems to only have patriotic feelings for England out of guilt and a strong sense that Ursula can't win.
It had not occurred to me that people within Europe talk smack about one another with the same ferocity as the rest of us and they have stereotypes that never occurred to me. How foolish of me not to think that there would be strife between people who all look the same (ie-white).
Go figure. My complaint about the novel is that the plot has a certain "Three's Company" quality that a dose of honesty would fix. I would have liked for Millington to have gone for a plot that is a little more realistic than the category "wacky hijinks". But its his first time out the gate and I am going to cut him some slack. Bibliovore says: Its like kettlekorn--yummy, but it won't be such a bad thing when it goes out of style. 
