Meredith Monday Schwartz

They were not not enjoying their pandemic experience.

Then after a single phone call, her husband of 20 years literally tells her that he's leaving.

No prior conversations, no unraveling slowly beforehand that she could point to, just done.

He's done with Belle and their marriage, and he wants zero custody of their three kids, including young one as young as 12.

Strangers is the memoir that grew out of that situation, expanding on an essay that Bell Burden wrote for the New York Times in their Modern Love section, and it covers so much more than just the divorce itself.

She rewinds the tape on their entire marriage,

looking for the signs that she missed, yes, but she also digs into the generational patterns that she inherited, the expectations placed on women in her world.

She is both a Harvard and an NYU law grad, and she's from a prominent family, and the social dynamics that kicked in the moment that her marriage imploded.

So you guys know I don't read a lot of memoir.

I don't gravitate toward it.

But this one I'd heard about so many different places.

It was very much in the zeitgeist.

I kind of felt like, okay, I just need to find out what all the fuss was about.

And I can tell you

that it is as soapy and interesting and tell-all and spill the tea as advertised.

She doesn't pull any punches in telling the story.

She does not pull a single punch in telling the story of her divorce.

And I'm not quite sure that I would say that I liked this book, but it moved really fast, and let's get into it.

As with Jen Hatmaker's Awake, from the very beginning, you are plunged right into the moment when Belle's world changes.

Those first few scenes where she's reeling from the gut punch of her marriage ending are visceral.