Happens Every Day: An All-Too-True Story

by Isabel Gillies

Isabel Gillies had a wonderful life -- a handsome, intelligent, loving husband; two glorious toddlers; a beautiful house; the time and place to express all her ebullience and affection and optimism. Suddenly, that life was over. Her husband, Josiah, announced that he was leaving her and their two young sons.

When Josiah took a teaching job at a Midwestern college, Isabel and their sons moved with him from New York City to Ohio, where Isabel taught acting, threw herself into the college community, and delighted in the less-scheduled lives of toddlers raised away from the city. But within a few months, the marriage was over. The life Isabel had made crumbled. "Happens every day," said a friend.

Far from a self-pitying diatribe, Happens Every Day reads like an intimate conversation between friends. Gillies has written a dizzyingly candid, compulsively readable, ultimately redemptive story about love, marriage, family, heartbreak, and the unexpected turns of a life. On the one hand, reading this book is like watching a train wreck. On the other hand, as Gillies herself says, it is about trying to light a candle instead of cursing the darkness, and loving your life even if it has slipped away. Hers is a remarkable new voice -- instinctive, funny, and irresistible.

Genres: Memoir, Nonfiction, Biography Memoir, Book Club, Divorce, Biography, Marriage

272 pages, Hardcover

First published March 2, 2009

About the author

Isabel Gillies, a lifelong New Yorker and actress for many years, is the New York Times best selling author of Happens Every Day, A Year and Six Seconds, and Starry Night (FSG), a young adult novel about first love. Her work has been published in Vogue, The New York Times, Real Simple, Cosmopolitan and Saveur. She lives in Manhattan with her husband, kids, and Maude the dog.

Reviews

[Kirsti · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read a couple of reviews of this that basically described it as "prom queen chats with you at the high-school reunion, has one too many margaritas, and reveals that her life has gone to shit." So of course I had to read it.

The author is a successful actress who gave up her career because her husband snagged a professorship at a small, elite college in a rural area. The husband abruptly dumped her for another professor, leaving her in the lurch with two small children.

While I feel sad for everyone involved, I think it was a good idea to publicly shame her ex and his new wife. Though she gives them pseudonyms, anyone can find the real names in thirty seconds on the Internet. Gillies's prose style is not fantastic, but it is conversational and shows her keen perception of others' feelings and motivations. And I take great delight in the fact that she has crushed her ex-husband underfoot (metaphorically speaking) by publishing a tremendously popular and successful memoir that will most likely overshadow his academic writings forever. Yeah, I'm petty like that.

[Bradt · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm starting to feel like the only guy on the planet who's read this book. I thought it was actually pretty good and hard to put down. A lot of people have said the writing is bad- and while it's not Edith Wharton or Henry James, I didn't find the writing bad-- just your average 'every day speak'. For workaday speech, it was fine, cliches and all. I think the point was that it's supposed to feel like someone talking to you, and it does. Additionally, lots of people seem to be dismissing this woman's pain because she's wealthy and maybe narcissistic and tends to emphasize physical things too much. These are indeed flaws. However, I would just remind readers that they may not have these particular flaws, but they undoubtedly have other, equally annoying flaws-- we all do-- and if we put them on public display, many would refuse to empathize with us. If we can't be decent to someone in pain, regardless of their flaws, then we're no better than the husband in this book, who seems almost psychopathic in his inability to give a shit about others.

[eb · Rating 1 out of 5]

Gillies seems like a sweetheart. She can't write worth a damn, and this book reads like a series of hastily tossed off emails, but that's part of its charm. You feel you're eavesdropping on someone's unpolished, gossipy account of a run-of-the-mill divorce.

[Stefani · Rating 1 out of 5]

The book was terrible, don't let anyone tell you differently. I found the writing to be amateurish at best, the endless references to WASPy catch-phrases like "Cooo Cooo" and "Patati-Patata" to be gag-inducing, and the privileged tone of the author to be patronizing to those of us who are not familiar with Lulu DK fabric or the importance of fresh flowers. For the love of God, I really don't give a shit that your grandfather wrote letters to John Cheever as the voice of a dog (did she steal this from a Seinfeld episode)!


As if these details weren't agonizing enough, we find out, later in the book, that her wonderful, movie-star resembling husband, left his first wife when she was pregnant?! Was this not a warning sign for her? At that point, the rest of the novel became a caricature that progressively worsened with each page....pushing her friend, who she suspected was dating her husband, to hang out with her husband...alone; believing that friend when she told her nothing was going on, even though the evidence was obvious. Ugh.

[Nette · Rating 1 out of 5]

I'm so mad. I bought this book based on a couple of good reviews, and because I needed to beef up a B&N order to get the $25 free shipping option. Hey, how bad could it be? Oh, so very, very bad. (If this book was a Dancing With the Stars contestant, it would be Steve Wozniak.) It sounds like it was written by a dim-witted 13-year-old, translated into Basque and then translated back into into English by an internet tool. Here's a sentence from page 16: "I was wholly in love with my life: two healthy children, a brilliant, tall (my father is tall and my mother when describing someone she approves of mentions if he or she is tall) professor husband who was carefully placing the evidence of our happy family all over the bathroom wall so everyone could see." I refuse to donate this to the library because I don't want to spread the horror. Anyone need kindling? Or mulch?

[Sarah · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book. Gillies' voice is honest and funny and just REAL. I listened to it on my iPod and when it was over I was so sad. Especially because she ends it by TOTALLY leaving us wanting more. I hope there is a sequel in the works, like, right now.

[Vicki · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was very tired at work because I stayed up too late reading this book. The writing isn't great, but for some reason the book just grabbed me and wouldn't let go. I felt so much sympathy for the author, and believed that I understood what she was going through. I've read comments that said reading this is like watching a train wreck, and I think that's true. You don't want to watch, but you can't help yourself. The fact that the book takes place mostly in Oberlin made it more interesting, too. It's illuminating to see what people from other places think of our state and this famous college, etc. (I was happy to read some nice things about Ohio for a change -- maybe we don't appreciate what we have here.) I wonder how the ex-husband and his amour are coping with their new "celebrity" around town? I wish/hope I could believe that they are squirming with discomfort at the exposure of their duplicity and disloyalty, etc, but they probably aren't.... we can always justify our behavior to ourselves, can't we...

[Jon · Rating 4 out of 5]

The story of the breakup of a "perfect" marriage written by the wife, Isabel, with striking candor and an amazing ability to transcend her anger and bewilderment. It's the bewilderment that stuck with me: her description of being blindsided by the sudden destruction of her whole life was truly unforgettable. My wife read the book just before I did, and she had no hesitation in laying blame on the husband and his coldly calculating new lover. That's certainly a possible reading, but I found the whole thing far more ambiguous, because Isabel never gives us enough evidence to know exactly what happened. SHE didn't (and apparently still doesn't) know exactly what happened. Her husband was completely uncommunicative, simply repeating over and over that he couldn't go on with this life any more, without ever explaining or even trying to explain either why or when the difficulty started. The new lover, who we learn in the end became his third wife, is similarly opaque. We never know for sure that an affair was going on, and if it was, whether it was the cause or merely the occasion of the husband's inability to stay in the marriage. Meanwhile Isabel flounders, both in the story and as the narrator, mixing up chronology, leaving many events undated, scrupulously describing even her own hysterical and embarrassing outbursts, and purposely (in my view) preventing the reader from condemning anyone. An amazing description of a breakup, written with great generosity.

[Mom · Rating 2 out of 5]

I am giving this book 2 stars because it was easy and fast to read and get over with. I have a hard time relating to a spoiled rich girl with an easy life before and after her divorce. Sure when your husband leaves you for another woman it is devastating, but when all you have to do is move to your rich parents house on Park Ave, pick up where you left off with all your old loyal friends and spend all summer at the beach in Maine, sorry, no sympathy here. I mean who goes around crying and telling everyone in town your personal problems. Really she created her own drama. I think she completely lost me when twice she made reference to how amazing it was that these women on Ohio took care of their kids without help!! Please, give me a break. It seems her marriage was marred by her own immaturity.

[donna backshall · Rating 2 out of 5]

I think if I'd read the book rather than listened to the audio version, I may have bumped this up to three stars. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred the author ruins his/her own book by performing the narration, and totally botching it. Such was the case here.

Gillies sounded like a pouting, much too entitled and matter-of-fact, teenager. I couldn't bring myself to like her enough to care about her husband leaving her, because she seemed far more attached to her designer fabrics -- and what they represented of her life in NYC -- than her life in Ohio.

[Laura · Rating 2 out of 5]

God, what an elitist brat! I could not stand her! I live two doors down from "bricky", so I was very excited to read this book bc it is fun to read about the place where you are. I added 1 star purely bc I enjoyed knowing all the little shops and restaurants and buildings she wrote about. She was so disrespectful to the town of Oberlin. It was a classic case of a city snob looking down on the town. I am also from a city and live in this small town, so I am not exempt from being a fucker, but she is so fucking snobby that I wanted to tear my hair out. She also has never had anything bad happen to her except for this. Divorce is undeniably excruciating, but I couldnt believe some people lead such happy lives. I won't ever understand the WASPs I guess. She was also fucking crazy! I have been the crazy obsessive girlfriend, and have done things I am not proud of in efforts to make people stay with me. Stilll, i was shocked at her lack of self awareness. There was some part where her mom called her out on her selfishness, which meant she was aware of it, yet she never internalized it! I go to Oberlin, and people talk about this professor and book fairly often. It is framed as the professor was a sleazeball who cheated on his wife in some salacious scandal. While it is awful that a marriage ended and a family was splintered, it seemed he went about it in as kind of a way as possible. He fell in love with someone, but he ended things as soon as he realized that. There is no evidence that he actually did anything while they were married. Normally i am the type to distrust all men, but in this case it seemed josiah did the best he could. The other thing I didnt understand was the "abandoning my children" thing. He seemed like he still wanted the kids. He was still being a good father to them--he just didnt want to be married to isabel any more. Maybe there is more that we dont know, and maybe the sons are reading this review and angry that im sympathetic to their shit dad. I thought isabel was completely insufferable. I thought their marriage was terrible and would not have lasted regardless of Sylvia's presence. I am glad that both of them have found love and I hope they are happy. Both of them are still professors at oberlin and it has been 10 years, so it seems Josiah made the right life choice.
Anyway:
-dont read this, its an insufferable white lady with a happy family and a million friends and tons of money and privilege talking about her greatest trauma which is the end of a marriage
-she is transphobic as fuck
-shes a snob
-there is not that much that is interesting here
-she is not a good writer, but i guess i do not fault her for that bc she never claimed to be a writer
-eat pray love was annoying for similar reasons but Elizabeth Gilbert was not quite as insufferable

[Ellen Puccinelli · Rating 5 out of 5]

I see a couple of other brave individuals down there who went out on a limb to give this book a five-star rating, although I note that the vast majority of reviewers took Isabel Gillies to task for her inability to write. I must say I do not agree. I find this author/actress's style perfectly detailed and immensely readable. At her best, Gillies reminds me of Suzanne Finnamore on a softer, gentler day. She does make writing look easy, though, and I did finish the book feeling that Isable and I were new BFFs - that is how personal and honest this memoir is. So natural was the prose, too, that even I, who was impressed throughout, probably do not give the author adequate credit for the effort that this work no doubt required. The honesty with which Gillies tells her story is impressive and comforting; I'm probably not alone when I say that I was ashamed at how relieved I was to hear about the things she did to try to dissuade her husband's mistress from breaking up her family. I loved this book. And, oddly, I feel compelled to wish Ms. Gillies every happiness in her new marriage, right here on the Good Reads site.

[Danielle · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not the best writing ever, but Gillies is not a writer by trade. She is, in fact, the actress who plays Detective Stabler's wife on Law and Order:SVU. I picked up this book because I'm a fan of the show and about to get married, and thus reading lots of things about marriage. Again, while the writing is not technically fabulous, Gillies describes her thoughts, feelings, and surroundings in a really evocative way. This book is a fascinating look at a marriage falling apart. I really enjoyed it.

[Amy Gray · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wow. I read this straight through and stayed up until the wee hours because I couldn't put it down. The reader knows the basic plot (guy abruptly leaves wife and two small children for woman he barely knows) going in, but still, it's a shock to read how it all played out. The whole thing was even more interesting to me because we live not too far from Oberlin, and I recognized many of the locations in the book: the Sears in Elyria where Gillies' ex-husband shopped for appliances is the same one where we bought our stove, we've been to the metropark mentioned (although I think she may have misspelled Carlisle as Carlyle), and I'm pretty sure the Trader Joe's is the one in Crocker Park/Westlake. Because I was so fascinated by the woman who Josiah (actually Oberlin professor DeSales Harrison) left his family for (Laura Baudot), I tried looking her up online (really, I can't have been the first) to put a face to a name----the only photo I could locate was in an Oberlin newsletter from the spring of 2006, where she is standing directly behind Harrison and next to an Asian woman who I'm guessing is probably Secca from the book, with an Asian man (Ward?) in the front row. Maybe I'm reading into it, but Secca and Laura look like they are giggling over some kind of shared secret or inside joke, and knowing what Laura did to that family and knowing how Secca kept it from Isabel, I just want to knock their silly little heads together.

I realize that marriages fall apart every day, but the abruptness of the ending of this one is jarring, especially considering that Harrison barely knew the woman he left his family for, that The Other Woman was also married, and that Gillies had followed Harrison to Ohio, putting on hold her acting career. The fact that he had left his first wife while she was pregnant (!) for another woman yes, should have been a giant red flag, but I can't fault Gillies for Harrison's serious relationship issues.

It looks like Gillies has written a second book, this one about meeting and falling in love with her second husband. Good for her.

[Janet · Rating 3 out of 5]

I started reading this book as I was waiting for my chocolate banana vivanno (BTW terrific marketing gimmick, Starbucks!). I was on page 50 by the time I chugged down the last of it and then stood in line for another 10 minutes to buy it because I was by then hooked. Based on Tolstoy's observation that "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way" Gillies' family is so golden and so perfect that even the most unperceptive person would recognize that a train wreck of epic proportion is absolutely inevitable. She has a beguiling style so immediate that you almost feel you are sitting across the table from her - well, at least as she describes the happy part. The book falls apart in the second half as she chronicles their break-up - it just doesn't flow and in some parts you actually feel as if she's nagging YOU as the reader to confirm that she is beautiful, smart, witty, industrious, an uber mom, good lover, etc. but then I guess even the most confident person is rife with self doubt when they are dumped. It's frustrating that she never really drops the hammer on her unfaithful husband because if ever someone was worthy of an avalanche of scorn it is this guy. Then I realized the overriding censorship was because of her two young sons and wanting to preserve their relationship with their father. The epilogue which consists of one paragraph plus a sentence didn't ring true and seemed to be dashed off like she was late to a meeting.

[Jen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well, as advertised on the cover, I did indeed stay up all night to finish this memoir. Gillies tells a whopper of a story--her super-hot, super adoring poetry professor hubby leaves her almost completely out of the blue for a colleague he's known for 30 seconds. He is, quite simply, a total loser with a messed-up head. But Gillies takes the high road, saying she'd rather light a candle than wallow in the dark or something like that. And I mostly applaud her for that because she has young children and she wants them to have positive feelings for their dad. But a tiny part of me, if I were in her shoes, would like to take that candle and burn his ass down.

Then I thought about it more and Gillies does get something of a sly and elegant revenge. Even taking the high road as she does, there is no way that Josiah, her ex, can look like anything but the emotional zero that he is. And her storytelling powers are good enough that this has become a word-of-mouth bestseller. LOTS of people now know his true colors. And I hope his current wife has read this book closely--because it's like a crystal ball foretelling her future. Have fun dearie!

[Uwe Hook · Rating 1 out of 5]

Don't bother touching this book.

Other than the author's knowledge of expensive fabrics and fashion, I found little self-examination from her as to the "root" of the problems in her marriage. After all, what man would want to leave a perfectly decorated house? Because of this lack of introspection, I finished the book with more judgments than understanding.
I kept wondering about the "other side" but something tells me the ex has too much class to respond. And unfortunately for him, (and his all-too-easy-to-find real identify), he is left to clean up another mess. How is this expose good for anyone in her family, unless it can help pay for more designer fabrics?
One last thought: what criminally-minded editor allowed this sentence from page 79 to remain: "He was SMASHED, so I made him leave the bar with me on my cell and DRIVE." Oh, at least she was on her cell so she could hear any potential lives being lost. Hellooo?
Sure it was fun to read (like a good reality show is to watch) but the accident left in the wake makes me feel embarrassingly complicit.

[Bonnie Brody · Rating 2 out of 5]

Isabel Gillies has written an 'oh, so quaint' and shallow memoir of her divorce. You might know her from the role she plays on 'Law and Order: Special Victims Unit' as Kathleen, the wife of Detective Eliot Stabler. In this memoir Ms. Gillies tries to portray the events that led up to her husband's leaving her along with her own feelings about the divorce.

Ms. Gillies focuses on the surface ornamentations of life such as designer clothing, expensive home decorations and WASPiness, rarely looking deeply into what her husband was like or what dynamics could have actually precipitated her husband's wanting to leave her. After reading the book, I felt like I did not really know her husband at all. Perhaps she didn't know him either.

She talks about having known Josiah, her husband, since they were children vacationing in Maine. She describes him as complicated and having a mind like a cathedral. He is also handsome - "think Gregory Peck" - and dark, but other than that the reader is not privy to much about his nature or character. I don't know what his values are, what they talked about late at night, what his dreams and ambitions were or those core beliefs and dreams that we all have.

One of the more profound things she says about her husband, Josiah, is that "He is well-spoken but has a very quiet voice. He is vastly interested in what the other person is doing and thinking, but reveals almost nothing about himself, so you can go through an entire friendship, even a marriage, with him and not know what he is thinking and doing." (p.33) It shocks me to think she has been with him for six years and has not drawn him out, not observed his actions, nor evaluated his values. Could she be so self-absorbed that she is actually not aware of the character and personality of the man she married?

When she first meets 'the other woman', Sylvia, a new faculty member at Oberlin College where her husband is a professor, Isabel wants to befriend her. This is before her husband and Sylvia have gotten together. Sylvia is recently married and tells Isabel about the ceremony. Isabel reacts:

"Didn't all people who wore Prada (of course that is what the embroidered bird dress was) have the good sense to get their toes done when they got married? Isn't that part of the fun of getting married, to get your toes done with your pals?" (p.57)

When Josiah decides to leave Isabel, she mourns having to leave her newly purchased home with its William Morris wallpaper and DK furnishings. I don't even know what these are yet she mentions them several times. I felt like it was almost as difficult for her to let go of her interior decorations as it was for her to leave her marriage. At one point, Isabel's best friend suggests she confront Sylvia about what is going on between her and Josiah. Isabel states: "How did Bess send me on this mission looking like such a dork? We were so concerned about what I would say that we forgot the most important thing - what I would wear." (p.181) Well, Isabel, I think that you have things 'bass ackwards' - what you have to say IS the most important thing.

She talks about her WASPiness several times with pride. Things like old family money, generations in this country and having a country home in Maine all mean a lot to her. We never get to know what Isabel is really like and I get the feeling that she really doesn't know either. Outward trappings mean so much to her, along with wanting other people's approval, that she loses sight of what is most important. Somewhere along the course of her life, she doesn't appear to have developed a clear sense of self or others which is sad. She just doesn't seem to get what people are all about in any deep way.

I wish I could have liked this book because divorce is tragic, especially when there are young children involved. I know that Isabel felt great pain at being left and her children losing a father. However, this book leaves out the more important aspects of what she and Josiah were like as a couple and what could have led up to this. I don't think that Ms. Gillies has the insight to explore these deeper matters.

[Katie · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is not supposed to be a book that garners praise for its brilliant character development and clever prose. This is the story of what happened to a woman who sacrificed her career for her husband to move to a small college town, only to be dumped shortly after the birth of their second child for a brand new colleague-and one the author befriended. It is written in the perfect style for a memoir. It is not badly written and it represents the author's manner of speaking; it makes us feel like we are talking to her. What Gillies does better than some far more amazing writers, is relay all of the details of betrayal with a keen perception that can be uncomfortable at times. She tells a story that needs to be told more often in this world. People get badly hurt, by betrayal and the dissolution of a marriage. It doesn't "happen every day" but it happens more often than it should, and anyone who is ok with it "happening every day" might benefit from thinking more deeply on the subject. As an aside, the title came from a statement made by the OW in this betrayal- a rather classic attempt to normalize actions that hurt others to make oneself feel better.
It is interesting to me what people who hated the book picked out of the narrative-I read reviews criticizing her as sounding whiny, being a shallow, white, wealthy snob, that she was obsessed with designer fabrics and clothes, that she dissed the midwest, that she is trans-phobic and that she has publicly bashed her husband which will damage the lives of her kids. I think someone who is blindsided by their spouse and the father of their children, who was deliberately led to believe she was making sacrifices for a lifetime partner, is allowed to whine a bit. This is not the same as having trouble "getting over" your high school boyfriend of 2 months asking another girl to prom. People who get married and begin to make plans as a family-big plans that involve buying houses and giving up jobs and moving hundreds of miles away-owe their partner's honesty and commitment. Adults are supposed to be more mature and not require constant new stimulation to continue to love someone. We don't fall out of love with our kids or our parents. No one respects friend dumping. But what---relationship dumping is ok? Bottom line-Isabel tells an honest story about what happened to her at the hands of two dishonest, entitled, narcissistic individuals. So she's white. And her family was wealthy. That doesn't make her pain any less meaningful. Those features are more relevant to the two entitled individuals who caused her pain--who were also white and wealthy. And she didn't talk constantly about designer colors and clothes. She mentioned them in the context of the cheating friend who stole her husband, to provide an image of who she was and how she dressed. And she mentions these things other times, as a means of telling the reader how different her life in Ohio was. She wasn't putting down Ohio for a lack of designer items, or indicating that was all she cared about. She used these descriptions to create an image of how different her life in Oberlin was and, if anything, to tell the reader that she preferred that lifestyle to the one she grew up with. All those reviews missed the point. If you are young and an Obie, you are bound to hate his book. You likely haven't yet been cheated on and you may not yet be able to distinguish between breaking a commitment and sexual freedom and you may want to defend two engaging professors. But this does exactly what is supposed to do.

[Michelle · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read a lot of reviews of this book and they somewhat misrepresented the premise: memoir of a former actress and model whose "perfect" college professor husband leaves their "perfect" marriage to be with another woman. But within the first few pages we learn that said husband was divorced with a child by age 28. Not the worst thing on the planet, but he was divorced because he left his first wife for another woman when the wife was a couple months pregnant. Nice guy. Then we learn he has an alcohol problem and he continues to talk to the "other woman" (receiving big thick letters that say "I love you") and refuses to stop even though his new wife (the author) begs him. I found myself asking, where were this chick's friends when she was marrying this guy? So the husband was hardly perfect and the marriage seemed incredibly volatile... couples counseling within the first few months, horrendous fights, etc. Then he meets the new other woman and within months has ditched his wife and two young sons. (All I can say is good luck to wife #3).

One chapter begins with the phrase "I am not a writer" and she says she's been told she writes good emails. That is very apt. This read like a lot of rambling emails and blog posts. Sentences such as "My story about me and Josiah is mine" and "he was naturally capable of doing small braggable things you could brag about." There was a lot of "I loved it" "it was great," etc. without descriptions. Her writing style was almost unreadable at first. Eventually I was able to overlook it as I got engaged in her story. And despite thinking her judgment was questionable, I did find her desperation very palpable and I know I would've felt that same out of control anguish if I had been in her situation. It was very brave of her to put this into a book because she certainly exposed all her extreme emotions and didn't make herself out to be some kind of hero. I really wanted to reach through the pages and give her a gigantic hug (also slap the husband). Despite some of the book's flaws, I did get wrapped into the story and very much enjoyed the read, even crying at the end when she and her sons leave their beloved home behind.

[Lori · Rating 1 out of 5]

I'm a little ashamed of myself for finishing this book, because it was really awful in every way. Isabel Gilles chronicles the sudden unraveling of her marriage when her husband decides he doesn't love her anymore and wants out, all the while denying the affair Isabel suspects him of having with a colleague.

Gilles states right at the beginning that she is not a writer, and she is correct. She writes like she is chatting with a girlfriend on the phone while being distracted by her toddlers, all run-on-sentences and interruptions and asides and broken chronology. Despite the way she goes on a little too much about being an over educated, highly privileged, liberal thinking New Yorker comfortable in the world of academia, she comes across as...well...dim. She seems to see the world in cliches and all-or-nothing extremes (my "perfect" life, my husband who is just like Indiana Jones, my mom who is the best ever mom in the whole wide world). She puts out really private, embarrassing stuff (pet love names, a tendency to throw tantrums and indulge in tears, word-by-word replays of lovers quarrels) with no embarrassment and little reflection.

So if the book is that bad, why did I finish it? Um, for the same reason I like to gossip, or can't resist looking at a car accident on the other side of the freeway. Her husband, a literature professor at Oberlin College now married to the woman with whom he had an affair, comes across as such an ass that it feels gratifying in a low down way to imagine his mortification at the success of his ex-wife's book. I can't believe that she wrote this thing for any reason other than to get back at him. No matter how many times Gilles avows that they are a happy extended family now--no matter how many times she says that writing the book was an exercise in relating how her difficult divorce helped her become a better person (or whatever)--laying out all of that embarrassing, private stuff seems inexcusable to me.

[Allison · Rating 4 out of 5]

Surprisingly moving, a very interesting portrait of academic life, and when you put it down, the realization of a very subtle revenge.

[Booklover, Indianapolis · Rating 3 out of 5]

(Sep) Isabel Gillies is happily married to her professor husband, has two small boys, is teaching a class and has friends and life is good - until one day, it isn't. In this relatively short book, Isabel shares the story of how she went from being a wife to being divorced. I can't say the book is terribly well written, and I found that parts were perhaps overly dramatic (she is an actress, perhaps that's why?!). However, I found myself unable to put this down, wanting to read on to find out what happened, how it happened, and how she dealt with it. There were times I wanted to reach through the pages and smack her - she was too willing to hide her head in the sand and not face what was right in front of her. On the other hand, I got her - it's hard when your perfect life is crumbling around you and you have no way to make it stop. I don't usually like memoirs - I really don't believe people can remember dialogue that well, or things that happened in the past that clearly - but in this case, I felt like I was reading it in real time, and I felt the emotions and the honestly pour through the pages. I wish we knew if he ever admitted that Sylvia was the demise of their marriage - his feelings for her - and if he ever actually committed adultery or instead just carried on an immature lusting for someone other than his wife. I was a bit put off at the end she likes Sylvia now? This woman who was willing to help destroy a marriage? Yes, he's the one who was married, but she was too, and she knew he was, with kids, which makes her an evil bitch in my opinion. I hope her husband gets dumped flat on his ass one day - he's a complete asswipe - marrying, having a child, cheating and leaving; and then to do it again. He's about the worst role model his sons could ever have - immature, selfish, and willing to ruin anything that gets in his way of finding his own happiness. Total dick.

[Callie · Rating 3 out of 5]

She is not a quote unquote writer, but in some ways that is refreshing. Her style is very unaffected and flows along and pulls you right along, too. I read this book in about two sittings. It's just a story about a marriage breaking up b/c of an affair and I don't know that she says anything profound or that her experience is much different than others. Here are some quotes from it. She's funny a lot:

"I wish I were the confident, cool person who can handle women from the past in an unruffled, grown-up , sophisticated way, but sadly I'm not. In my defense, though, I feel like, with the right woman, I could be. I have a made-up woman in my head whom I could handle. She would be tall and zaftig with long, red curly hair. She would have a big laugh and a habit of playing with your jewelry while you talked to her. Smart but not noticeably so. Just nice, maybe? But it's as if God is testing me with these complicated, dark-haired petite chicks. I can't deal with them."

Here's when her husband got angry with her when there was a mess under the car seat. He called her slovenly:

"Slovenly was a low blow coming from Josiah, who was much neater than I was. He could have said messy, or even piggish,, but slovenly felt mean to me."

Here's on I can relate to b/c I feel the same way about Sundays:

"I hate Sundays. I get the Sunday blues just like my mother. She always warned me that if I ever felt bad about something on a Sunday ...wait until Monday to deal with it because more than likely the majority of the shittiness was just because it was Sunday."

[Sally Kilpatrick]

I'm going to have to read ALL OF THE ROMANCES to get over these books that I'm reading for divorce research. Let me just say that this is one of four memoirs that I have read/am reading about women who've been blindsided by divorce. Know what all four of those women have in common? They had a baby no more than two years before the husband came in with a dramatic sigh and "I deserve happiness, too" or "I just can't do this anymore." Imagine the world if all of us women could make these sweeping declarations at the drop of a hat.

(The fourth one was cheating on her and gaslighting her, something also common in at least two others. I've not finished the fourth one)

In at least two of these, the couples had just bought a new house, too. Do with that what you will.

The good news is that all four authors came out on the other side glad that they'd moved on with their lives, but, at the time, their worlds had been shattered.

In general, these reads have solidified my view that many men--not all, blessedly--view women as their own personal playthings. If they can't play with the woman anymore or if she's marred her attractiveness and divided her attention by giving birth, then he'll just move on to someone else who's pretty and will live to meet his demands. The sooner we kill that idea with fire the better.

[Jeannine · Rating 1 out of 5]

The fact is, affairs and marriage break ups occur every day (thus the title "happens every day"). So, why the book? To get back at her husband of course! The book was self-indulgent and I couldn't get past the "I only care about what happens to my children" sentiments; here's a clue: if you care about your children (who are still very small) you don't write a book about your divorce with their father that someday they will be able to read. You just don't do it.

The author had horrible biases about people in the midwest ... she was kind of a snob. Her writing was nothing special; I suspect she has a contact in publishing.

If anything good comes from this, I hope the writer experienced some kind of catharsis.

Terrible read. So glad I got it at the library and didn't spend any of my own money on this.

[Jennifer (Parsons) Marquez · Rating 1 out of 5]

Actually, I'd give it 0 out of 5 stars -- it was that bad. Horribly written memoir with long sentences that are broken up by even longer parentheses. Long paragraphs. Long, draggy story. And, you get annoyed by the writer because she keeps forcing her husband to hang out with this woman alone ... and then he eventually cheats -- imagine that. Ugh.

[Nina · Rating 1 out of 5]

When they arrived Sylvia introduced me to Jeff, whom I made a big deal about.

"Isabel, I love your bracelet. You really know how to wear a bracelet," she said.

That made me feel so cool! She had identified me as the kind of woman who knew how to wear a bracelet. Was it true?

I couldn't deal with the writing.

[Tori · Rating 5 out of 5]

Anyone who has been divorced should read this book. Anyone who has a friend or family member that is getting divorced or has been through a divorce, should read this. It gives good insight into what might truly be going on that others on the outside don't know about.

[Megan Doney · Rating 2 out of 5]

The writer's and my experiences are alike in many ways, and so I deeply sympathize/empathize with her. But the writing is amateurish, poorly paced, and largely unreflective. If I ever write my story of this passage (for public consumption), I am going to do a better job of it.