‘Ex-wives like us illustrate how this freedom for women turned out to be God’s greatest gift to men,’ quips Patricia, the flapper heroine of the American novelist Ursula Parrott’s 1929 bestseller, which, republished nearly a century later, reveals striking contemporary resonances. Both timeless and unmistakably of its time, this candid portrait of marital breakdown, and the life of a girl about town in Jazz Age New York, took the US by storm at a moment when dawning sexual liberties jostled with lingering Victorian values.
Parrott married in 1923, before birth control was legal, and had a son in secret, against her husband’s wishes. She left him with her family, until her husband discovered his existence and divorced her. She turned these wounds into art in Ex-Wife, which was initially published anonymously as a sensationalising tactic.
The novel follows Patricia, whose marriage to Peter sours as both embrace the era’s new permissiveness. But the same rules do not apply to both sexes – as Patricia learns after confessing to an indiscretion. Cue Peter’s moral disgust, violent arguments and an abortion. Thank heavens for the seasoned ex-wife Lucia who takes Patricia under her elegant wing, initiating her into ‘life in the era of the one-night stand’.
In time-honoured breakup tradition, Patricia hits the party circuit with Prohibition-era abandon, anaesthetising herself with absinthe, shopping sprees and casual flings. In a new foreword, Monica Heisey, the author of Really Good, Actually, finds echoes of her own 21st-century divorce.
Immersing us in Patricia’s consciousness, Parrott captures the anguish of heartbreak and the faltering healing process. Her crisp prose, blending flippancy and frankness, sometimes slips into haunting melancholy: ‘My whole life with Peter was a dream fading, growing remote as the remembrance of sunsets.’
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