This book seeks to place marriage within the context of the household and the local community. The author critiques the personalist view of marriage that focuses too narrowly on the couple, and neglects their interaction with others. He also challenges the place of the nuclear family as the focus of consumerism within market capitalism. He is critical of the ‘closed’ household, self-sufficient and uninvolved with the community. In modern America, Success, for the family, has come to mean attaining the economic means to contract for services and to avoid practical dependence on neighbours’ (1). McCarthy advocate the ‘open household’ which, for example, engages in unpaid exchanges with neighbours. He defines the household as ‘a neighbourly space which resists consumerism’. He argues, cogently, that ‘internal’ family love attains depth through an outward orientation, through common endeavours, and ‘productive’ relationships with others (154).

The best sections in the book are those which challenge modern views of romance.

Although modern romance and domestic life are set at odds, sharing a home, paradoxically, is supposed to follow naturally from romantic love … Will love die in a desert of dirty laundry and unwashed pots? (17–18).

McCarthy argues that we need to demystify our contemporary notions of sexual desire and romantic love. ‘Good household practices, not romance, will keep love alive’ (22). Some advocate keeping romantic love alive by adolescent ‘let’s pretend’ escapades (‘strip your bedroom of personal effects, invest in expensive sheets, pop open the champagne, ‘let’s pretend we’re in a hotel!’). Some Christian marriage books advise that a couple ‘must’ have an evening alone together every week if they are ever to stay married. Some evangelical premarital counselling advises that a newly married couple should offer no hospitality to others for the first year. The author brilliantly demolishes all such self-indulgence and shows that the context for true and lasting marital love is a mutual and active commitment to the common good. While ‘romantic’ love has to be ‘renewed by weekend getaways and expensive restaurants, Christian love, in comparison, is ‘more akin to good household management, raising children, and helping out the neighbours’ (24).

McCarthy is also excellent when contrasting modern views of sexual fulfilment with the Christian view of marriage. The very ‘specialness’ of marital sex is that it can be ordinary, because it is not the whole story.

One night stands and passionate affairs, in contrast, need to be earthshaking and splendid because they are the whole story. They are manic attempts to overcome the fact that there is nothing else (8).

In contrast to the market form of desire, marriage sets the meaning of sex within the environment and practices of housekeeping. In this context, sexual vitality has less to do with novel pleasures, and more to do with sitting together at the kitchen table and sharing a meal. It has less to do with exotic night spots, and more to do with sharing a bed night after night, year after year. Sex is our bodily coming to belong with another who knows us like no other. Sexual relationships have less to do with fleeting moments, and more to do with the passage of time. Marriage, in short, sets our desires in household time and place (43).

There is much in this book to challenge and provoke. From an evangelical perspective, it should be noted that it consists largely of discussion of current social thinking and the Catholic tradition, rather than the argument being based on Scripture. It will be of most interest to students within the Catholic tradition and students of social ethics.