Happens Every Day: An All-Too-True Story [Paperback]

Isabel Gillies (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 2, 2010

Isabel Gillies had a wonderful life—a handsome, intelligent, loving husband who was a professor; two glorious toddlers; a beautiful house in their Midwestern college town; the time and place to express all her ebullience and affection and optimism. Suddenly, the life Isabel had made crumbled. Her husband, Josiah, announced that he was leaving her and their two young sons. "Happens every day," said a friend.

Far from a self-pitying diatribe, Happens Every Day reads like an intimate conversation between friends. It is a dizzyingly can-did, 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.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Gillies left her recurring role on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit to follow her poet-professor husband to Oberlin, Ohio, when he got a tenure-track position in the English department. She threw herself into caring for her two sons, renovating an old house and teaching drama part-time—but her idyllic life was shattered when her husband decided he didn't want to be married anymore—or at least, not married to Gillies. (He subsequently wed a fellow professor.) Gillies brings both humor and sorrow to the narration. Despite a tendency to trail off at the end of sentences, which leaves listeners straining to hear the completion of a thought, she gives a brave performance that will have her audience cheering as she pluckily reassembles the pieces of her broken life. A Scribner hardcover (Reviews, Mar. 23). (Mar.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

"Isabel Gillies has written a heartbreaking memoir about the wild unpredictability of the human heart. She is stunningly candid and reminds every reader that, yes, lives fall apart, husbands leave wives, people start over -- Happens Every Day. Gillies is moving, funny, authentic, and never a victim. Her voice is instantly compelling." -- Elisabeth Robinson, author of The True and Outstanding Adventures of the Hunt Sisters

"Isabel Gillies tells the story of the breakup of her 'perfect' marriage with astonishing honesty, sharp humor, and not a shred of self-pity. This is a memoir that reads like a gripping mystery and a moving coming-of-age tale." -- David Auburn, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Proof

"What a strange and wonderful surprise: a gorgeous, funny, exuberant book about the disastrous end of a marriage. A loss like Gillies's might happen all the time, but it's rarely met with the passion, compassion, energy, and warmth that suffuse every page. With charming candor, she lays bare her sorrow and her joys, and finds a true -- and instructive -- talent for transformation and happiness." -- Maile Meloy, author of Both Ways Is the Only Way I Want It and A Family Daughter

"A memoir so raw you feel like it's your best friend telling you her story." -- Glamour, ("Must-Read" pick)

"By turns enlightening, funny, gut-wrenching... Happens Every Day is the nonfiction equivalent of Nora Ephron's Heartburn... Highly recommended." -- Library Journal, starred review

"I couldn't put the book down and ... my husband ... couldn't put it down either... Compulsive and, frankly, chilling late-night reading." -- Maureen Corrigan, Fresh Air on National Public Radio

"Gillies movingly evokes the salt-on-wound sadness of loving a spouse turned stranger." -- People (three stars)

"A smart, rueful memoir of love, betrayal and survival." -- O, the Oprah magazine

"I couldn't help but admire her bravery... Good-humored, self-effacing...You feel nothing but deepest sympathy." -- Ruth David Konigsberg, Elle

"Emotionally involving... There's a redemptive grace in [Gillies'] struggle." -- Entertainment Weekly

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 272 pages
• Publisher: Scribner (March 2, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1439126623
• ISBN-13: 978-1439126622
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.4 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (194 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #760,431 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Isabel Gillies, known for her television role as Detective Stabler's wife on Law and Order: Special Victims Unit and for her cinematic debut in the film Metropolitan, graduated from New York University with a BFA in film. She lives in Manhattan with her second husband, her two sons, and her stepdaughter.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

49 of 51 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars She "Gets It Right", April 6, 2009

By 

Mary Lins (Houston, TX USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Happens Every Day: An All-Too-True Story (Hardcover)

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I confess that I seek out stories of heartbreaking betrayal. I'm like the ambulance chaser of these kinds of sagas because I've been through it and I'm compelled to hear others' tales. It make me feel not alone in my pain, but I also like to see if the writer "got it right", the unimaginable pain of trusting someone completely and thinking things are fine and then in a matter of seconds having your entire world shattered. The shock alone could kill ya. If this has not happened to you, I'm so glad for you and this book will help you understand what a friend or family member is going through. If you HAVE had it happen to you, this book might dredge it all up and make you sad, but it also might uplift you to know that others know how you feel. It really does happen every day.

So it was that I saw that Isabel Gillies had written a book "Happens Every Day" about how her husband suddenly left her and their two very young sons, and I was compelled to read it. I'm very glad I did. It's wonderfully told; honest and touching. Gillies doesn't wallow in it, and she offers no excuses. She is honest about herself and all the red flags she missed. She even muses on why people in love miss or ignore red flags and clear warning signs...we all do it. It must have something to do with what love does to the chemistry in our brain. Later, after the boom has been lowered on you, the signs are all there - clear as day - only to make you feel like an even bigger fool.

Gillies paints a detailed cringe-inducing description of how she unwittingly befriended and sponsored the woman who "ran off with" her husband. We readers are uncomfortable while reading these passages because we already know that this woman is going to betray her, and we can't warn her...it's too late. It's beautifully done and I admire Gillies for her brutal honesty in the telling. You will become angry and feel protective of her when her husband tries that old: "Do you believe me or your lying eyes?" number on her. Gillies descriptions are vivid and spot on. The room really does spin when you've been leveled a shocking blow. Gillies "gets it".

33 of 37 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Heartfelt, June 18, 2009

By 

Dr. M. Bruno (Alma, Michigan) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Happens Every Day: An All-Too-True Story (Hardcover)

Perhaps the academics in this book could have written a more lyrical tome, but this book is heartfelt and poignant at times. Gilles is not the best of writers---she uses too much slang and cliche--but she writes from the heart and that goes a long way. It is a story of a reasonably good marriage that falls apart in a matter of weeks, and for that alone makes it good reading.
As an academic myself, I find it easy to despise the faux-French "other woman." For once she lands Gilles' husband, she becomes a spousal hire at Oberlin and does not have to search for another job. She avoids having to settle for teaching four sections of freshman composition a semester at a third tier university. In my experience, that alone for any fledgling professor is enough to break up a marriage. Now she can concentrate on some drab 18th century research that few outside academia will ever read. The only problem is she is married to a man who clearly has a fear of commitment;he left his pregnant first wife and left his second wife with two very small children for other women. So in one way she is like Sylvia Plath who was married to the poet Ted Hughes, the womanizer who was/is despised by millions, mostly academic women. Unlike Plath, she is like the many women who go after married men, who do not respect women enough to stay away. She may rationalize it as fate, finding her soul mate, something obscurely French about joy, life, love-- but the truth be told, she went after another woman's husband and took him, and even when Gilles begged her to stop, she did not.

For him: he is an average poet and scholar who is at a college with no graduate students. He is married to a woman with a cloying French accent who grew up in Vermont of all places. This may ultimately be a nightmare for a Harvard Phd. Was it worth missing out on the daily happenings of his children's lives? I doubt it.

In academia, after you've seen colleagues scramble to write scholarly books and juried articles for their entire careers, there will be much envy for Gilles' success:
A New York Times best seller, a probable movie deal, a role on a popular television show, and now she is now married to a man who does not have a fear of commitment. Is there an element of revenge in this novel? Yes, probably. But the best revenge is success and Gilles has transcended most academics' dreams. This does not happen every day.

143 of 177 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Too cute for its own good, April 1, 2009

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A. Andrews (Canton,Ohio) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Happens Every Day: An All-Too-True Story (Hardcover)

I really, really wanted to like this book but two chapters in, I found the author's tone so annoying that I couldn't take it. The phoniness and constant detailing of the haute bourgeois lifestyle and stressing how genteel it all was is just TOO MUCH. Not that there's truly anything that justifies leaving your wife and kids, but my God, could this BE any more stereotypical. Of course the hot professor is up to no good. Of course the catalogue-perfect organic hippie lifestyle is a sham. Most of us figured this out when we were college sophomores. If I had to read one more detail about cheese souffles, summering in Maine, and flower arrangements in Mason jars, I felt like I would start sympathizing with the husband. I really regret not liking this book but I found it frankly irritating.