Breaking Apart : A Memoir of Divorce [Unknown Binding]

Wendy Swallow (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0786865997 | ISBN-13: 978-0786865994 | Publication Date: April 4, 2001

"There are those who believe it is simple selfishness that leads people to divorce. For those of us who have lived it, it's hard to see why anyone would rip out their veins for some immature or narcissistic desire to get what they want, because that is what it feels like." --from Breaking Apart

Writing in a style that is both piercingly honest and profoundly moving. Wendy Swallow, in her gripping memoir of a divorce unfolding, traces the arc of her marriage to a complex man ten years her senior. She looks into her own heart and at her own childhood and young adulthood as a way of understanding the relationship and its ultimate breakdown. She also examines her struggle to balance her burgeoning career and the demands of motherhood.

And then she writes of divorce: the hopeful fantasies she conjured while still in her marriage, as well as the harsh realities she faced when she and her husband finally separated. "People say marriages break up," writes Swallow, "but mine finally broke down." With heartbreaking candor, Swallow illuminates the overwhelming financial and emotional stresses of divorce, the daily, unforeseen difficulties. But she writes too of the joys of independence and renewal. Her journey through divorce's rough terrain -- and the triumphant reconstruction of her life after divorce -- offer encouragement and inspiration to anyone struggling with a marriage, as well as an electrifying literary portrait of what it is to relinquish the comfort and security of a long-held dream.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

This graceful and engrossing memoir of marriage, divorce and rebuilding a life will attract many women readers. Swallow, a former staff writer at the Washington Post, admits that she shouldn't have married Ron, an attractive, volatile intellectual 10 years her senior, because "the person I didn't know very well was that laughing girl with the curly hair and the vulnerable eyes, the one in her mother's wedding dress." She stays married for many reasons: her fantasy of a happy married life; fear of shaming her family; and her need to rescue Ron, whose moods lead to depression and a minor breakdown. A Ph.D. stuck in a government job, jealous of his wife's journalism career, Ron often acts oddly, taking her to a comedy club after she has a miscarriage, for example. Despite their troubles, they have two sons 19 months apart, whom they both adore. When she reaches the breaking point, Swallow assumes that, as the mother, she will get the house, custody of her sons and financial support from her husband. Instead, she is forced to move to a small apartment and live in reduced circumstances. The couple work with a counselor on parenting skills, mediating a divorce that keeps their concern for the children at the forefront. Many readers will warm to Swallow; she is neither angry, self-important nor overly analytical. But some will feel that she's revealed too much about her former husband's emotional problems and too little of his side of the story.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

As Swallow points out in her introduction, there are very few memoirs about the dissolution of a marriage or the "breaking apart" in divorce recovery literature: "I...wanted to know if others had felt what I was experiencing: the look in the eyes of my friends when I talked about joint custody; the echo of my son's sadness down a telephone line; the loss of a sense of home as I bounced from rental to rental." Swallow, former staff writer at the Washington Post and the journalism director at American University, fills this hole with style and grace. There is no finger-pointing and no glamorizing of divorce as a carefree lifestyle. Instead, Swallow wryly acknowledges that both parties made mistakes and that both parties tried but couldn't fix them. Divorce may look like an easy way out, but the problems it engenders are just as difficult to solve as those that originally marred the marriage. Swallow and her ex-husband's insistence on minimizing the impact of the divorce on their children shines through as an exemplary way of dealing with a no-win situation. Recommended for all public libraries and for most social work collections. Pam Matthews, Gettysburg Coll. Lib., PA
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Unknown Binding: 293 pages
• Publisher: Theia (April 4, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0786865997
• ISBN-13: 978-0786865994
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.5 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (32 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,378,898 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars A Banal Attempt at Self-Pity, July 1, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Breaking Apart : A Memoir of Divorce

I have a problem with books like this. Although the world certainly has an overabundance of people with "problems" that can neither be ignored nor assumed to simply patch themselves up over time, it seems rather unfortunate that Ms. Swallow has determined to openly flay her ex-husband (in and of itself a rather cold, heartless, and calculated move against someone who - according to Ms. Swallow herself - does not have the emotional capacity to defend or redeem himself) as well as display her children's trauma to the world.

There are reasons for the psychological and psychiatric professions. I'm going to safely bet that if going through a painful divorce, it would be much more cathartic (and much more advantageous for the family as a whole) to actually visit a professional of some sort, rather than attempt to self-diagnose and engage in the "woe is me" fest that books like this represent.

There is nothing even remotely helpful in Ms. Swallow's book - unless you find it helpful to have yet another example of the self-absorbtion of many divorced parents.

Ms. Swallow's children will eventually grow up - when they do, I can only hope that they will seek professional guidance, rather than following in their mother's footsteps and foisting more atrociously self-serving writing onto us all.

13 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Emotional Rubble........., April 22, 2001

By 

A Reader... (Washington D.C) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Breaking Apart : A Memoir of Divorce

My own divorce experience is rather different from
Ms. Swallow's. Instead of an active participant, as she was, I was a
13 year old child in the center of a nasty divorce. Now 3 years later,
I can look back into it with eyes that are slightly less emotional,
but until a week ago, their own feelings, however torrential and
visable, were something of a mystery to me.

Until I read Breaking
Apart. As I opened the book, it was a mystery to me. Why I read the
book is something of a mystery to me, as memoirs have often struck me
as an indulgent genre, the chicken fried steak of literature. But as
my eyes darted into and through the book (I read its 352 pages in
about 1.5 hours), something clarified within me. Through
Ms. Swallows's clear, engaging prose, I learned what it meant to go
through divorce as an participant. The sorrow of being torn apart from
your partner dawned upon me. The similarties between a childs and a
wives divorce experiences shocked me. I remembered, as did swallow,
the feelings of destruction of yourself, that you are dust in a cruel
world. It is a beautiful, powerful book. ...

Please press the little
"order the book" button to get this deeply mooving
memoir. Even if you have never been subjected to the perticular
ravages of divorce, read it to learn something about the world, read
it because it is beautifully written, read it because it is a powerful
book.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Placing the Blame, June 30, 2003

By 

Joseph Baker (Alexandria, Virginia) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Breaking Apart: A Memoir of Divorce (Paperback)

As a divorced father of two, I tried to share the author's pain as she slowly delves into her own experiences. However, as I read chapter after chapter, I found out more about her own emotional problems than her husband's supposed ones. How could any good mother publicly denigrate the character of her children's father? One day her poor sons will realize how she put their pain on display in order to satisfy her fear that she was as much responsibile for the failure of her marriage as her husband.