THE TOP FIVE...Books About Divorce
I'm often asked for resources to support people going through divorce or heartbreak. Here are my suggestions in book form.
Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert
Look, if you haven’t read it, you’re probably rolling your eyes and inwardly groaning right about now because this memoir became such an enormous bestseller that even the concept of it has become a cliche. BUT YOU HAVE TO TRUST ME. I read this memoir when I was in the early throes of my own marital breakdown (although I didn’t quite know it then). The first section of the book deals with Gilbert’s own realisation that her first marriage was at an end and was so eerily representative of my own experience that it made me feel seen and supported in a destabilising and lonely time.
The Neapolitan Quartet by Elena Ferrante
A cheat because it’s four books in one, but I’ve put The Neapolitan Quartet here because Ferrante is just so brilliant at dissecting the constraints of womanhood and the radical strength it requires to forge one’s own path. These novels open in 1950s Naples and take you through a lifelong friendship between two women - one of whom goes through a divorce and an arc of personal reinvention. Raw, complex, and unflinching.
