At the start <\/b>of Sarah Manguso\u2019s new novel, Liars<\/i>, she writes: \u201cIn the beginning, I was only myself. Then I married a man, as women do. My life became archetypal, a drag show of nuclear familyhood. I got enmeshed in a story that had already been told ten billion times.\u201d<\/p>\n
If it\u2019s a story that\u2019s been told ten billion times, it\u2019s now many more. If you look at the bestseller lists, there\u2019s a profusion of new books \u2013 both fiction and memoir \u2013 on divorce. Many bestselling writers, including Miranda July, Leslie Jamison, Sarah Manguso and this month, Jojo Moyes and Canadian Haley Mlotek are tackling the topic.<\/p>\n
What\u2019s behind this trend in \u201cdivorce lit,\u201d and what is it about this cultural moment propelling women to rewrite an old story, one that is clearly resonating with readers? And what is different now from previous generations of writers on the topic: Nora Ephron, Erica Jong, Deborah Levy, among others?<\/p>\n
Divorce, by the book: Authors Haley Mlotek and Scaachi Koul talk it out<\/a><\/p>\n Manguso says she seems to have \u201chit on a cultural sore spot.\u201d In an interview with The Globe and Mail, <\/b>she said she was surprised to find \u201csuch an incredible army of women that received my book with open arms, professed gratitude, saying it gave them a kind of release from their rage.\u201d<\/p>\n Or as Lyz Lenz, author of This American Ex-Wife, <\/i>recently told Glamour, the rise of the divorce book coincides with \u201can untapped vein of female anger in America that is roiling to the surface.\u201d<\/p>\n But it\u2019s more than rage and marital breakdown at play in bestsellers including Liars, All Fours, Splinters <\/i>and You Could Make This Place Beautiful<\/i>. What this new wave of divorce books has in common is a desire to subvert and question the patriarchal institution of marriage.<\/p>\n \u201cI think these books all deal in some way with women\u2019s agency and redefining roles in marriage,\u201d says Brooke Warner, publisher of She Writes Press. \u201cAs women get more visibility and power, there\u2019s a discomfort ripe for writing about, especially in this moment when we\u2019re seeing progress met by backlash. The re-emergence of Trump and his posse of men, and the pushback on DEI \u2013 it\u2019s all about putting us back in our place.\u201d<\/p>\n Stephanie Sinclair, publisher of McClelland & Stewart and herself a divorc\u00e9e, has seen a wave of submissions coming in about the unravelling or disintegration of marriage. \u201cAlmost all of them touched on the invisible load and the complete imbalance of domestic duties,\u201d she said. \u201cThere\u2019s a growing awareness about how impossible it is to carry the cultural expectations placed on us in an outdated institution built to serve men. I think writers are now challenging what a traditional relationship should look like.\u201d<\/p>\n Haley Cullingham, senior editor at McClelland & Stewart, who commissioned Haley Mlotek\u2019s divorce memoir No Fault<\/i>, says that book is about divorce as \u201ca revolutionary act\u201d \u2013 not as a shameful thing, no longer something to frame as a failure, but something brave and admirable. \u201cMore women are writing towards undoing the patriarchal myth of marriage, and it\u2019s really powerful,\u201d Cunningham says.<\/p>\n What this new wave of divorce books also shares is a focus on personal reinvention and the possibilities for greater freedom outside of a heteronormative relationship. As Manguso points out, they all end with joy. \u201cEven Jane, the narrator in my book, who is arguably the angriest, figures out a way in the end that she can be, in some ways, free.\u201d<\/p>\n And unlike previous generations of divorce books, most of which had happy endings with women finding new partners \u2013 books such as Elizabeth Gilbert\u2019s Eat Pray Love and Glennon Doyle\u2019s Untamed \u2013 the current divorce literature is more realistic, more focused on personal rediscovery. As Warner puts it, \u201cwe\u2019re in a moment of ascent and change for women during a critical time.\u201d<\/p>\n One of the most popular books on this list, All Fours by Miranda July, is not even about a typical divorce. In the end, the protagonist continues living with her husband in the same house, but each with a new partner and their own rooms while co-parenting their child. In her book, July has given women a new model, albeit one that seems possible only with the kind of money and freedom that comes with the character\u2019s minor celebrity status. Which leads one to ask: is this alternative marital arrangement and having an independent sexual and creative life something that can only happen in fiction?<\/p>\n The author herself hints at that when her narrator tells her friends about her new arrangement, expecting some of them to do the same. \u201cIt was like we had all agreed to sneak into the haunted house together, but once inside, giggling and full of nerves, I looked back and discovered that I was alone. Everyone else had chickened out.\u201d<\/p>\n Another parallel in this new wave of books is the recognition, driven home by the COVID pandemic, that the nuclear family is isolating and doesn\u2019t give women space to grow. \u201cI love that more and more women are writing about how the single family unit is no longer the perfect way to operate in the world,\u201d Cullingham says. \u201cAbout how divorce encourages us to think about community and how to break away from that isolation and engage with the wider world.\u201d<\/p>\n But the explosion of these books is not just a zeitgeist thing. Leslie Jamison, author of Splinters<\/i>, believes the divorce story is compelling for literary reasons as well. \u201cBecause the experience of life rupture is such a deep and gutting one, and the attempt to build a new life in the wake of an old life coming apart \u2026 people can come to that story from many angles, many places, many experiences of their own,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n Canadian writer Monica Heisey, author of Really Good, Actually<\/i>, concurs. <\/i>Her book is a comedic take on the fallout from the divorce of the 29-year-old narrator. One of the reasons she wrote her book was because of the paucity of divorce stories of women in their 20s. And because \u201cit\u2019s natural when going through major life events to find solace, comfort and humour in similar stories, and there weren\u2019t that many I could find,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n Now, however, she says there are more and more. There is clearly an appetite for such books, whether contemporary or archival. One of them, Ex-Wife<\/i> by Ursula Parrott, was originally written 100 years ago and reissued last year by the publisher. Heisey, who wrote the forward to the reissue, says the story was \u201cshockingly similar\u201d to her own, despite the passing of a century. \u201cThere are things that are period-specific: the treatment of women, the casual, open misogyny, the high-proof alcohol lunches, but the emotional core remains as true to the experience of heartbreak my friends and I have gone through.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s why it\u2019s such an enduring theme in literature,\u201d she says. \u201cWhether you\u2019re heartbroken in 1925 or 2025, it\u2019s the same. But this explosion of women telling stories of divorce chips away at the stigma and suggests it\u2019s receded somewhat. There\u2019s a hunger for these kinds of stories, and women writers are now less embarrassed to talk about it.\u201d<\/p>\n According to Sinclair, Cullingham and others in the industry, the wave is not over. In the coming years, more divorce books will hit the shelves. \u201cAs we start to question the value of marriage,\u201d says Cullingham, \u201cthat is opening the conversation to question everything we\u2019ve been taught as women and how to be in society. Reclaiming divorce as a revolutionary act opens us up to be able to reclaim and rethink so much more about our lives.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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