Strangers: A Memoir of Marriage book review
I just read a book that was extremely haunting and unnerving in a really satisfying way.
She's had 19 summers with him. She's had 19 Christmases with him. Nineteen Thanksgivings with him.
I'm not going to forget this book for a very, very, very long time.
The book is Strangers: A Memoir of Marriage by Belle Burden. It's a nonfiction memoir about marriage, heartbreak, betrayal, trust, and what happens when the life you've built with someone suddenly falls apart.
I couldn't even wait to pick it up from the library. I was finding myself up until 1:30 in the morning listening because I could not put this story down.
The book follows Belle, and you get right into it. She's talking about how they had this amazing day. They're sitting down, having fun, and the pandemic has just started. They're going to head out to their vacation home on the island and spend some time there.
And then the next day, her husband is like, "I'm leaving. I'm not in love with you anymore. I gotta go."
You follow Belle, James, and their three kids for at least the next eighteen months while Belle is dealing with the pandemic and all of its complications. She's raising her children. One of her sons is at a friend's house and decides to stay there for about half the year. She's also trying to detach herself from her marriage.
Belle is an incredibly accomplished lawyer. She comes from a really prestigious family, a notable family on the East Coast, and she's raising her kids in New York.
Now they have to switch to online school. Christmas comes around, and how are they going to do things without her husband?
And then there's her heartbreak because Belle keeps waiting for James to come back and say, "Oh my gosh, what a mistake."
You really want to judge her. You really want to say, "You're so naive. Come on. He was such a dick to you."
But she was married to him for nineteen years before he asked to leave.
"She's had 19 summers with him. She's had 19 Christmases with him."
When you think about all the conversations, all the births of their children, all their birthdays, all those years together, and then you decide you don't want it anymore, and that's it?
James left in the most callous way you could ever leave. He's basically like, "I'm over it. I'm out. I gotta go. You're not the person anymore."
His lack of sharing, combined with Belle's isolation during the pandemic and being out on the island by herself, is really, really interesting.
You also have a little bit of betrayal because James wasn't telling her the truth about all of their finances.
And you have her frustration.
Why me? Why me?
But the book is not a pity story.
I want to fight for her because she's a lawyer, and you're thinking she's doing what she should be doing. But the book reads almost like her journal.
It made me think a lot about my own story because I was pregnant during the pandemic. I had my daughter on June 16, 2020, right in the thick of everyone not knowing what was going on.
I have friends now who have kids, and they're like, "How did you do it?"
We had to.
I remember being married and my husband and I talking about who's going to be in the room for delivery. Your parents or my parents? What are we going to do with all these casseroles people bring us?
And it turns out we didn't have to deal with any of that because people couldn't be around. I was happy that my husband could be in the room when our daughter was born.
But I hadn't considered that other people were splitting up. Marriages were dissolving. People were deciding, "I'm leaving."
Oh, there just happens to be a pandemic right now?
Reading Belle's story made me think about what was happening in other people's lives while we were all experiencing the pandemic in completely different ways.
Belle is an exceptional writer.
I know she said that some parts of the book were slightly fictionalized, but there was one part that really stood out to me. She wanted to be a writer, and she went to a critique group where someone told her they didn't like her writing.
And it stopped her from writing for twenty-something years.
If that part was true, screw him.
And if you never hear from him, I'm glad you decided to start writing despite what he said because those words hung with her for a really, really long time.
I know being a lawyer, we do get caught up in words. We fixate on certain things.
And to think that someone's criticism could stop you from doing something you wanted to do for more than twenty years?
I'm so glad she started writing again because this was a great book.
This is a very interesting book about betrayal, financial literacy, and trust, but it's written in a way that you don't want to put it down.
I was hanging on every single word, trying to figure out what would happen.
And then I was cheering for Belle at the end.
She sees her ex-husband, and she's like, "Hey," and keeps it moving.
Those feelings did die. They moved to their appropriate place after he discarded her. And it's not going to happen that quickly just because somebody discarded you, either.
"It's not gonna happen that quick just because he discarded you either."
That's one of the things I appreciated about this book. You get to follow Belle through all of it, including the part where she's still hoping James will come back, even when you're sitting there thinking she deserves so much better.
Nineteen years of marriage doesn't just disappear because one person decides they're finished.
Strangers is captivating, and it's definitely one that I would reread.
I feel like it's going to be turned into a movie.
Belle is an exceptional writer, and I was still hanging on every single word, even when I was frustrated with what was happening.
It's a book that will make you think about yourself, your relationships, and what was happening in your own life while you were living through the pandemic.
Have you read Strangers? Have you considered picking it up?
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Until the next book review,
Kyla
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