Molly Haskell

For fifteen years, Molly Haskell and her husband, Andrew Sarris, both nationally known film critics, experienced the joys and vicissitudes of an intense two-career marriage-until Andrew was seized by a strange and terrifying illness. Facing the possibility of losing him, Molly was forced to look inward to confront the contradictions in what had seemed an ideal relationship. A remarkable cast of supporting (and occasionally nonsupporting) characters includes critics and Haskell's other writer colleagues; heroic and neglected hospital personnel; sadistic bureaucrats; and fellow patients and their spouses-all playing out variations of the marital duet in this medical grand opera, where death is the common enemy, but not the only one. Part horror movie, part screwball comedy, 'Love and Other Infectious Diseases' is a testament to the resiliency of the human spirit.

Phillip Lopate: "There are moments of such naked honesty as to make any lover of candor's jaw drop in astonishment and glee. Molly Haskell gives us the great adventure of illness, the drama of masculine-feminine, the comedy of nurturing and separation, in a voice full of intimacy and humor. I do not know which to applaud first, the considerable charm of the narrative voice or the unsparingly analytical rigor which underlies it. A book to delight romantics and skeptics alike!"