The Monogamy Prize: How an American in Paris Found Her Game

A marriage memoir from the bestselling author of Bringing Up Bébé

On the eve of her fiftieth birthday, Pamela Druckerman’s life has stalled. She was in her early thirties when she moved to Paris, married a dashing fellow journalist, and became a celebrated author. Yet now, it’s her husband who churns out a book a year and wears earplugs around the house. Her adolescent children are more French than American, and her Parisian neighbors haven’t gotten any more welcoming. Once a prolific writer, she has slipped in status to her family’s head of purchasing and quality control.

Tired of feeling unappreciated—and tempted by an unexpected offer from a man from her past—Druckerman decides to try on the famously flexible French approach to monogamy (“What is fidelity, really? Isn’t it to be true to yourself?”). She grants herself a one-off fiftieth birthday present: a secret afternoon with “the banker.”

What ensues is more than she ever expected. Is this radical self-care or relationship suicide? Have honesty-obsessed Americans been approaching coupledom all wrong? Can an American in Paris ever truly become French?

The Monogamy Prize is a disarmingly intimate and deeply funny account of one woman’s passage and a bold exploration of the rules of modern marriage.