Strangers

An excellent memoir, heart wrenching, real, beautifully written. It kept me up at night, so haunting in its emotion and veracity. What happens when a man you were happily married to leaves you and your three kids without a reason and doesn’t want custody or anything to do with you? I lived the shock together with the author and applaud her courage in sharing her story.

I finished Strangers tonight. One of the best memoirs I have ever read. I divorced at age 51, now 63. Different circumstances by the children feel the loss of the family unit almost always. It is sad, but it happens. We can’t protect them from pain. We can only hope they choose well and both parties live up to the expectations. Her writing is glorious. I was enraptured and captivated by every word.

I read the excerpt in Vanity Fair this afternoon. I was compelled to read more so I purchased the ebook and just finished reading it in one long sitting. Eloquently written, painfully honest, and bravely breaks the silence that modern society still demands women to be obedient, like children, seen but not heard. I see you, I hear you, I want to read more of your writing (look what “Greg” took away from us).

Bravo! Excellent from beginning to end! Her courage and determination so inspiring! And I just can’t say enough about her writing skills! I literally couldn’t put this book down! Outstanding!

I bought this book after reading an excerpt in the NY Times. And while I found the first part of the book compelling, I found that quickly got to a place where the minutia of the narrative started to wear on me. That’s not to say that the book isn’t competently written. And given what the author has been through I certainly empathize with the horrible position she found herself in, how shaken she must have been., and how horribly her ex-husband acted. But I’m torn between whether it is a privilege that she shared all of these details of her experience, or that the purpose of this book is mostly a cathartic act of therapy for herself – to both revisit the experiences of her love affair and marriage– and or a means to shed sunshine on the abhorrent behavior of her sociopathic ex-husband. I don’t want my criticism to feel like I’m trying to deprive her of agency in telling her story. But on a certain level reading this memoir felt like listening to an obsessive friend ruminating over something that is so far in the rear view mirror than you can’t even see it anymore. And it is worth noting that my view is from the perspective of a middle aged person who never married (despite dating some wonderful women I could have married) and having survived my parents own volcanic marriage and divorce. I also didn’t come from a family in which I had a lot of exposure to healthy, happy, long-term relationships or marriages, as my grandparents didn’t express much love and seemed to have just stuck together because they loved each other when they were young and then were captive to a measure of human inertia. I’ve been the person in the relationship who was extremely loyal and took a loyal view, only to be blindsided with the news that it was over. Perhaps it is extremely cynical on my part, but I’m not at all surprised that the Hollywood fairytale of long-lasting, life long love and marriage is a promise that is delivered to us already broken. I wish people would be loyal to their commitments (and especially to the life and children they have created with someone else) but by this point I ‘m not surprised that people act selfishly and cruelly. And while I’d love for a world to exist in which people did have the mutual capacity for solid, long-lasting love and loyalty to a partner, I don’t know that it does. It almost seems an evolutionary flaw that a spurned parter holds on to the shredded ribbons of love after their mate has cut them to shreds. Anyway, I’m a third of the way into the book and I don’t know that I feel that it is compelling enough to continue.

You have to keep going! I couldn't put this book down; it was loving, sad, mysterious, and revealing. We see facades but not the interior. Yet, we are all trying to make the best of what we have.

I really enjoyed this book. Belle’s voice is clear And deadpan. She writes very calmly about her life crisis, and I rooted for her to come out stronger. Her Descriptions of Martha’s Vineyard and New York City were very evocative.

Surprisingly gripping, deeply human, thought provoking. A one-sitting-because-you-can’t-put-it-down book.

I have never been through this, but I thank you, Belle, for your incredible moving story . What you did by offering this book is extremely important . My favorite part is your summary at the end about what you hope your kids get from the telling of this story. Lucky, lucky kids, to have such a mom.

I usually do not read memoirs, but this one caught my eye. I read it in one morning, it grips you and never lets you go.