Ex-Wife

Patricia's marriage to Peter begins in ardent, reckless intimacy and ends in a bitterly witty reckoning, as she recalls the moment he leaves, the failed attempts to stop him, and the pride and denial that make the breakup feel both absurd and devastating. In the aftermath, she and her roommate Lucia reinvent themselves as "ex-wives," trading cynical jokes about independence, aging, and modern womanhood while drifting through a precarious New York life of advertising jobs, parties, clothes, and drink. Their world is full of flirtation and restlessness, but also of money troubles, jealousy, and the uneasy freedom that follows divorce. The novel moves back through the marriage's earlier glow: a carefree trip to England and Paris, dreams spent too quickly, the hope invested in their baby Patrick, and the crushing grief of his death. Poverty and humiliation follow, yet so do small acts of tenderness, like Peter's practical gift of stockings when he cannot afford the shoes he wants to buy. As the couple's finances improve, their emotional instability deepens, leading to infidelity, guilt, and the threat of honesty. Around them gather vivid figures: Bill, a pleasure-loving older man of old-fashioned codes, and Stepan, a polished predator whose stalking culminates in violence and fear. The story closes in the shadow of memory, family, and estrangement, as a woman returns to her father's house and confronts the altered landscape of age, loss, and longing. This edition has been fully restored with modern typesetting, custom cover design.