Novel looks at divorce, forgiveness
She read across many genres "from John Grisham to Jane Austen." She enjoyed Stephen King and Ernest Hemingway. She read a raft of science books and a lot of biographies. All of that helped her zero in on a recent social trend as described in newspapers and magazines — the divorce party.
Dave thinks of it as "family domestic literature."
In "The Divorce Party," Gwyn, 58, and Thomas Huntington, 63, of Montauk, Long Island, have decided to end their marriage with a party — a celebration attended by friends and family, held on the eve of their 35th wedding anniversary.
They raised their two children, Nate, 33, and Georgia, 25, in Huntington Hall, one of the few homes on the east end of Long Island that survived the Great Hurricane of 1938. They want to separate, but they want no part of a nasty divorce. They want to stay involved in each other's lives and that of their children.
On the surface, it seems progressive.
As Thomas tells it, he wants out because of his recent conversion to Buddhism; he wants to pursue a different kind of life characterized by spirituality. Gwyn is filled with skepticism, but she's going along with her husband's wish, sort of in a fog.
When Maggie discovers what is happening to Nate's parents, she wants to run away. But after a struggle, she figures out a way to stay and help Nate deal with his childhood problems.
During an interview with Dave from her home in New York City, she said she interviewed 45 people who were nearing the end of long relationships and she noticed a "common thread." It was that they thought it was just easier to begin again than endure to the end.
"They didn't want to be 65 or 70 when the marriage ended. They wanted to run into another life, before they were old, and prove that anything is possible."
When Dave considered writing a novel about it, she "really wanted to figure it out. I didn't want to shake the characters into figuring it out." She recalled that model Christie Brinkley's husband was sleeping with a 19-year-old girl, suggesting that her characters were keeping some things hidden.
"Thomas was trying to leave the family unscathed, make the divorce appear faultless," she said. "The spiritual path he had found was making him a stranger to Gwyn. It soon becomes clear that Thomas is carrying out a grand deception. It's not Buddhism at all. He's just running away with a younger woman."
Recent comments
I LOVED this novel. I read the entire thing this weekend, and could…
dana | July 7, 2008 at 6:09 a.m.
sad story,but predictable.
lin | July 6, 2008 at 9:33 a.m.
