\" A real Page Turner\"

Jacqui Gabb and Janet Fink. (2015). Couple Relationships in the 21stCentury. Palgrave Pivot. Palgrave MacMillan Studies in Family and Intimate Life. Series Editors G Allan, L Jamieson, D Morgan.
 
"A real page turner".

From the moment I began reading the first page of this fascinating book which focuses on the diverse variety of partners' everyday lives, I was captivated and struggled to put it down. The ease with which I could sit and read this book was in part because the style has a real clarity of expression. This means the messages that Gabb and Fink are trying to convey to their audience are easily understood, and the absence of overtly academic jargon and complicated sentences means there is no need to re-read sentences in order to grasp what is being said.

I particularly enjoyed the opening empirical chapter 'Relationship Work', which was the first of several chapters that showcased partners' relationship practices. Adopting a 'practices approach' allows the authors to demonstrate that the seemingly small, mundane activities/routines that partners' engage in, such as 'holding hands' while 'cleaning their teeth', are little investments in their relationship that allow the couple to actively 'work at' their relationship and is what helps these partnerships to endure. A specific appeal to me was how this approach enabled the authors to critically engage with Giddens' (1992) popular theoretical claims about the model of the 'pure relationship' (where he posited social actors are likely to adopt a rational and calculating approach to their relationships, where the relationship continues so long as it satisfies the needs of both parties). The accounts portrayed in Gabb and Fink's book deftly challenge Giddens' notion of 'disposable relationships'.

A noteworthy merit of this book is the authors' deliberate decision to avoid using relationship typologies or identifying partners' gender (without using of male/female pronouns), when introducing the audience to excerpts of data about people's relationships. Instead we are encouraged to see people first and foremost as human, rather than as belonging to this or that gender or sexual orientation category. Using this method to introduce the partners' relationship stories means readers are encouraged to suspend any inclination to empathise with or prefer some experiences because it involves stories about partners with a gender identity or sexual orientation that is perceived as the same as our own. This likewise, avoids us dismissing certain stories because of perceived differences. The subsequent chapters follow partners' experiences across aspects of their daily lives and it is in later chapters that the authors reveal aspects of their participants' gender identity, sexual orientation, race, ethnicity, class, etc, as and when it matters to the analysis. By the time we are introduced to this information, it enhances our understanding of these partners' relationships. 
 
Couple relationships in the 21st Century offers an excellent account of the 'Enduring Love Study' and I am certain this book will prove to be a valuable contribution to existing scholarship that has studied intimacies, relationships and everyday lives.