Here’s a memoir by some poor woman who moves to Ohio for her husband’s work and three months later gets dumped by him for a much younger colleague. It reminds me of the Belle Burden’s STRANGERS, another memoir about how very possible it is to know almost nothing about your own husband.
Most interesting thing about this book is how extraordinarily old fashioned the writer is. The divorce happens in 2005, but it reads like its 1955. It is just wild. Try this:
“Because I was on the cover of Seventeen magazine when I was fourteen and I am an actress, I depend on the fact that, objectively, I am good-looking. Tall, blond hair . . But I can tend to depend too much on the idea that I am pretty and sometimes, I don’t try very hard.”
She spends a really astonishing amount of time on home decor, and really cares a great deal about her husband’s height. And again:
“It seems clear to me now that although Josiah loved us and wanted dearly to have a ncie family, there was something in him that just did not want to let him do it.”
‘Nice family’?!? What is that?!? Who says that kind of thing?
I’ve got to report she also comes from money. She seems to think it is pretty normal that she spends her summers in Maine, with the ‘other women’ all of whom apparently don’t have jobs. She grew up in an apartment overlooking Central Park. She acts like moving to Ohio is an insane trek into the wilderness.
I don’t know why I sound like I’m slamming her so much. I enjoyed the honesty of this book. It was refreshing. And it was encouraging to see how she recovered. One wonders how she did not see the red flag that he left his first wife while she was pregnant. He left her with two toddlers; maybe with this third wife he’ll make it till the next kids are in elementary school.
