The best books for women recovering from betrayal or divorce

This book was published years after mine, but I wish it had been around when I was going through my life upheaval. The author writes about relationships and has an intelligent and thoughtful take on marriage. You might not agree with her philosophy, but her book is eye-opening, will challenge your assumptions, and shares information that might help people as they rebuild their lives after widowhood, infidelity, and divorce.

This is another book I wish I’d been able to read when my marriage ended. In this memoir, Gina Frangello writes about the explosion of her own marriage, the cause of which was her secret affair. This might seem like a surprising choice, but in so many ways it gets to the heart of why modern marriages come apart. So many women, myself included, entered into marriage committed to the idea of following codes and rules that were not our own. This author bravely excavates the reasons for her affair without punishing herself, but taking responsibility. In this way it is a sister memoir to Rachel Cusk’s Aftermath. This is not a book about widowhood at all, but I recommend it because it can offer fresh perspective on marriage and relationships…for next time.

I’ve read this novel many times and I find something new in these pages with every visit. The title refers to a town in England and we are in the mid-19th century, but if you think there’s nothing here for a modern reader, think again. During a time of great political upheaval, Dorothea, an earnest educated woman, marries a much older man, believing that with him she can live a life of the mind. However, she soon realizes that she is marginalized by her unemotional husband, destined to live an isolated and joyless life, a prisoner of her husband’s closed mind. I think of this as one of the great feminist novels, a story about a woman who makes a mistake, but finds a way through to a new life, albeit with many challenges. There are other wonderful characters and storylines, all so beautifully realized that you can see the scenes unfold in your mind. This novel might just take over your life for a few days. The final paragraph has to be some of the most quietly stirring prose written in English. 

This is one of my favorite novels ever. Though it describes the author’s own society—Edwardian England—it tackles so many human subjects that will resonate for a modern reader. That a man was able to inhabit so many fully realized female characters is nothing short of miraculous. The plot concerns a social collision one can imagine happening today: two earnest, well-intentioned intellectual sisters in London meet a snobby upper-class family and, later, an impoverished bank clerk. While trying to help the clerk, the sisters create a crisis. How all these lives intertwine tells a story of marriage, betrayal, widowhood, forgiveness, and love. All roads lead to a house in the countryside called Howards End. The author’s famous epigraph says it all: “only connect.”

In this masterpiece, we follow two sisters from post-World War Two onward through love, betrayal, marriages, and widowhood. She manages to cover a good part of adult female experiences as lovers and wives and beyond. But truly, this is a book worth reading and re-reading because with every new pass, you’ll find something new to marvel at. The twists and turns of the plot are subtle…this is sentence by sentence prose amazingness. The book was published in the 1980s but it feels edgy and modern in its way of slipping into the minds of the two sisters as they make their way through the challenges of their lives. Somehow Shirley Hazzard manages to inject a dark story with so much humor. It’s one of those laughing and crying at the same time reads. And once you’ve read it, we can discuss!