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I’m Sorry…Love, Your Husband: Honest, Hilarious Stories From a Father of Three Who Made All the Mistakes (and Made up for Them)by Clint Edwards, Joe Hempel (Narrator) Unabridged Audiobook, 4 hrs., 42 mins. Read: September 23, 2019 |
The “Short Synopsis” for the book is:
In this inspiring and unconventional book of essays, Clint Edwards sheds light on the darker yet hilarious side of domestic life.
Which sounds pretty good, and is what led to my checking this book out. In the same vein, my “Short Response” is: nope.
The “Full Synopsis” is:
Marriage and Kids are No Joke
He may not win Father of the Year, but Clint Edwards has won the hearts of thousands—including the New York Times, Scary Mommy, and Good Morning America—thanks to his candor and irreverence when it comes to raising kids, being married, and learning from his mistakes.
Clint has three children: Tristan (the know it all), Norah (the snarky princess), and Aspen (the worst roommate ever). He describes parenting as “a million different gears turning in a million different directions, all of them covered in sour milk.” In this inspiring and unconventional book of essays, he sheds light on the darker yet hilarious side of domestic life.
Owning up to all his mishaps and dumbassery, Edwards shares essays on just about every topic fellow spouses and parents can appreciate, including: stupid things he’s said to his pregnant wife, the trauma of taking a toddler shopping, revelations on buying a minivan, and the struggle to not fight the nosy neighbor (who is five years old).
Clint’s funny, heartwarming account of the terrifying yet completely rewarding life of a parent is a breath of fresh air. Each essay in I’m Sorry . . . Love, Your Husband will have you thinking finally, someone gets it.
Which brings me to a “Fuller Response” (I’ll keep my “Full Response” up my sleeve). Those of you who are too young to remember the 1991–1999 Prime Time hit, Home Improvement, may not appreciate this, but I kept thinking of it as I listened to this book. In almost every episode, Tim “The Tool Man” Taylor does something that exasperates and/or disappoints his wife, messes things up with his kids or coworkers in the first act (generally it’s family, but occasionally it’s friends/colleagues). Things get worse during Act Two, leading Tim to get some advice from his wise neighbor, Wilson, and then implement this advice to patch things up with whoever he’s in trouble with and become a better father/husband/friend/colleague. Along the way, America laughed at Tim’s foibles and follies—and at some good comedic moments that had nothing to do with the main plot—and then had their hearts warmed by the ending. That equation worked well for 203 episodes (eh, probably 170 or so, really).
Every essay in this collection reminded me of that outline—except for the comedy. There’s no fictional Tool Time TV show to entertain, there are no actual laughs (maybe 3 bits that made me grin in the 4.75 hours), just frequently preachy lessons about how to become a better man/husband/father (most of which are repeated at least 3 times in the book, almost word-for-word).
The descriptions of his three kids that show up in the synopsis are repeated throughout the book, which is good—because otherwise, I wouldn’t have known this about them. He doesn’t show this at all in his essays.
Hempel does a fine job with this. My problems with this aren’t about him, it’s the content. I can’t say his narration is great, but it might have been. Everything’s colored by the content.
The amount of mild and casual profanity from someone who mentions church as often as he does was a little incongruous. Maybe today’s Mormons are just different from the ones I grew up surrounded by. This isn’t what led to my low rating, it’s just something that chafed a little while I listened to this (and really, it’s the only thing that stuck out to me about the book as a whole). My objection along these lines is that the phrase, “it was a d*$# move” gets tired as a constant evaluation/summary of his actions. If that’s all he can say, maybe he should focus a bit more on the writing and a little less on the self-improvement.
In the end, it wasn’t the triteness, it wasn’t the preachiness, it wasn’t the redundancy of these essays that turned me off (although none of that helped). It was that there was nothing in the essays to make me interested. It was just dull. I didn’t laugh, I didn’t get inspired, I wasn’t entertained. It just was. The only thing that got me through the book was a lack of options that day and a need for something to listen to at work. I’m sure Edwards is a nice guy and a swell father, but he’s just not funny or insightful. Or if he is, he’s left it outside this book.
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