Breaking Apart: A Memoir of Divorce

by Wendy Swallow

Book Overview

Now in paperback, this "courageous story, beautifully told" Washington Post] offers a searing examination of a marriage coming apart piece by piece.

"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...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0786885165
• ISBN13: 9780786885169
• Release Date: May 2002
• Publisher: Hachette Books
• Length: 292 Pages
• Weight: 0.65 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.1" x 8.0"
• Age Range: 17 to 18 years
• Grade Range: Grade 12 to Postsecondary

Customer Reviews

So Helpful

This book is so realistic and gives a unique view of what it's really like to go through divorce. It's also helpful by illustrating some mistakes she made that others could avoid. I recommend it to anyone who is considering divorce.

Breaking Apart: A Memoir of Divorce

An interesting and well-written memoir which will resonate with any woman who has experienced divorce, especially if she has children. I'm eager to read Swallow's next book.

Confirmation that I was not the only one to experience this.

I have never written a review here, but I just looked at the negative reviews and I felt compelled to defend this book that was my life-line at a certain point in my life. I think, that unless you have experienced something similar to this -- and not all divorces or marriages mirror this -- it is difficult to understand. I was married to a very intelligent, charming, and bi-polar man as well. It really helped me to step outside myself and see the situation from a different vantage point to understand why I made the choices I did, like having a second child, then a third. I cried, nodded and talked to the book the whole way through. It was such a close mirror to what happened to me. It was also a great book to give to my mother, my best friend and my sisters who were never privvy to just how bad things were until it was over. It helped them understand what it was like for me. She ended it with hope for me that the future was going to be OK. Now I have just discovered her sequel, memoirs on remarriage. Once again she is a step ahead of me in the same life path. I remarried last weekend. This book may not be great for someone who has never had a similar experience. But for anyone who has clung to a dream of the way life should be despite being emotionally battered, and then faces reality, will definitely appreciate it.

The Emotional Rubble.........

My own divorce experience is rather different fromMs. Swallow's. Instead of an active participant, as she was, I was a13 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 andvisable, were something of a mystery to me. Until I read BreakingApart. As I opened the book, it was a mystery to me. Why I read thebook is something of a mystery to me, as memoirs have often struck meas an indulgent genre, the chicken fried steak of literature. But asmy eyes darted into and through the book (I read its 352 pages inabout 1.5 hours), something clarified within me. ThroughMs. Swallows's clear, engaging prose, I learned what it meant to gothrough divorce as an participant. The sorrow of being torn apart fromyour partner dawned upon me. The similarties between a childs and awives divorce experiences shocked me. I remembered, as did swallow,the feelings of destruction of yourself, that you are dust in a cruelworld. It is a beautiful, powerful book. ... Please press the little"order the book" button to get this deeply moovingmemoir. Even if you have never been subjected to the perticularravages of divorce, read it to learn something about the world, readit because it is beautifully written, read it because it is a powerfulbook.

A godsend!

For anyone who is going through a divorce, or who has already gone through one, and is feeling alone, this book will be a lifesaver! I am in the process of getting a divorce and although I have a large network of friends, no one truly knows what you are going through unless they've gone through it as well. The author, Wendy Swallow, writes so elegantly and from the heart. I actuall felt like she could see what was in my heart and wrote about it. I have highlighted half the book and plan to reread those passages whenever I feel sad or alone. I thank Wendy for writing this book and shedding such a real light on the harshness of divorce.