California journalist and author Finnamore (The Zygote Chronicles
) renders a sharp, cut-to-the-quick account of her painful divorce after five years of marriage. Living in the canyons of tony Marin County with her marketing v-p husband, N, and their toddler son she calls A, the author is devastated by N’s announcement that he wants a divorce—and yet she is not surprised. In brief, astute chapters riddled with a dry, deadpan humor, the author reconstructs this surreal journey from giddy romance with a suave older man (she is 40, while he is in his 50s), through motherhood and the dawning suspicions of his infidelity, to his abandonment and denial that he is involved with someone else. Finnamore enlists various characters to see her through her crisis, which spans denial and anger, grief and acceptance: her jaded, long remarried mother, Bunny, who brings the pain-killers and stocks the house with junk food; her no-nonsense diminutive friend Lisa, who remarks upon hearing the news of the divorce, “You have no idea how I have longed for this dayâ€; and her vehemently antimarriage childhood buddy Christian. Eschewing a divorce lawyer, Finnamore manages to come through with the help of her friends and conveys in this frank, winning memoir her supreme vulnerability and bravery. (Apr.)
