Divorce: An Oral Portrait

By George Feifer

Book Overview

No matter how many divorced people you know, when you face the demoralizing prospect or grim reality, you feel alone in the world. Realizing you're notthat many have undergone precisely your tormentis... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1565842723
• ISBN13: 9781565842724
• Release Date: September 1995
• Publisher: New Press
• Length: 322 Pages
• Weight: 1.45 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.2" x 6.4" x 9.6"

Customer Reviews

An invaluable companion for a painful process

Author Feifer is a lawyer whose parent's divorced when he was a child and whose own marriage was to end in a divorce. In this book, he gathers a series of oral statements from divorcees, as well as from experts -- divorce lawyers, a divorce judge, a psychologist, a sociologist. His book is a portrait of modern divorce in our country through the eyes of its pained subjects, but on a deeper level is driven and informed by Feifer's personal search to understand his own experience - at least that's my sense of it. To me, this gives the book a force and trajectory missing from the more academic but also excellent book "Uncoupling," also about the divorce experience. People who have gone through, or are considering, divorce or separation will find a lot here to which they can relate. All types are represented here, from wealthy to working class, ranging from people who were abusive or abused, to people who were sympathetic and understanding of their ex-spouse's pain to the point of tragedy, even while they made hard decisions about their personal futures. A recurrent theme in a majority of the cases is that people had a nagging feeling that something, somewhere, about the relationship wasn't quite right BEFORE they embarked on marriage. Anyone going through this painful process will find people or stories here, or parts of stories, with which they can identify.