Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
I'm Beth Golay, and this is Marginalia. Belle Burden works pro bono as an immigration attorney in New York City. Her new book, Strangers, A Memoir of Marriage, begins in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, when her husband announced he's leaving her and their kids, an unexpected and abrupt end to a 20-year marriage.
This memoir first appeared as an essay in the New York Times Modern Love section. Through Burden's account, we learn about the beginning and end of her partnership. But we also learn about her well-connected family and its impact on her life.
Burden's father descends from the Vanderbilt dynasty, and her grandmother is Babe Paley, a magazine editor and socialite who ran in crowds with Truman Capote. I recently spoke with Burden about how she transformed her initial article into a full book, despite roadblocks she first encountered decades ago. Here's our conversation.
Chapter 2: What is Belle Burden's memoir 'Strangers' about?
So this memoir began as an essay published in the New York Times Modern Love section. For any listeners who haven't read the essay, could you give us a description of Strangers? Could you set it up for us?
Sure. During the first week of the pandemic, I was with my husband and my two daughters, and we were having a very cozy, wonderful time during a very scary time in the world. I believed I was happily married. to a wonderful man, a great father and great husband. And then one day he told me he wanted a divorce. He gave me no explanation and he walked out.
And then he shared our entire life together, including custody of our children. Modern Love started there and went a little bit farther. And then my book really explores what happened afterwards.
So after your story was published in The Times, how then did it become a book?
So it was published in The Times on June 30th of 2023, which was very exciting for me. I had submitted it to the general email box and never imagined it would get published. And once it was published, I did not really imagine anything after that. I had always wanted to be a writer when I was a teenager, but I was told when I was in college that I could not write by another classmate.
And I stopped writing for 30 years and became a lawyer. So this is published and I got emails from two different editors at two different publishing houses who said, this should be a book and you need a literary agent. And I thought about that and was felt very flattered. And a friend sent to me, but this is the end, right? You're not going to write a book. And I had a full body feeling.
Yes, I am going to write a book. I have a lot more to say. And so I got an agent and then we did a proposal and went out to editors and my book was sold a few months later.
So the book has the subtitle, The Memoir of a Marriage, and that's certainly an accurate description. But I also found, you know, the aspects of your family history intriguing. This background was not a part of the modern love piece. So structurally, how did you weave these sections in with the narrative of your marriage?
Actually, when I first met with the woman who became my editor, she envisioned the structure and it clicked for me too, which was to start in the present and then go backwards to explore both my family of origin and meeting and falling in love with my husband and then to return to the present again. and go from there.
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Chapter 3: How did Belle Burden transform her essay into a memoir?
So I wanted to do that. And then the other thing that I really wrestled with in this book is the fact that both my mother and my grandmother were were with men who were unfaithful. And I thought I had reversed that legacy by marrying someone who was very stable, not a public presence, never yelled, but I repeated it in a spectacular fashion.
So I thought, what is it about the women in my family where this this is a pattern and how do I stop that pattern? So that required going back and talking about my childhood, my mother, my grandmother.
You know, you do mention your mother and your grandmother, but you also mention, you know, there was a thread in the story that had been whispered about over the years that James's father also left his family abruptly and then returned for a period of years before James's mother filed for divorce.
But as you just mentioned, you noted that your marriage had some aspects similar to your mother's and her mother's. And you talked about breaking this cycle. So what does breaking this cycle mean to you?
What it means to me is actually talking about it. So talking about it with friends, talking about it with my children, talking about it publicly. And that does not mean bad mouthing my ex. It actually means just saying what happened. I think as women and as mothers in particular, we are taught that when something like this happens, we feel
need to just clean it up, sweep it under the rug and pretend like it didn't happen. And I think that doing that does not serve us. It actually protects men. It demeans us. And I think it actually leads to, at least in my family, the behavior being repeated across generations. And I hope that by talking about it in a factual way that I can stop that pattern for my children.
You just said the word demean, it demeans us. And I imagine this is a difficult subject to write about. And when people would say the words cathartic or revenge to you, you said those words felt demeaning. So in crafting this book, was any part of it, was any segment especially challenging for you in terms of getting the story on paper?
There were a couple of parts that were challenging. It was painful at the time to write about falling in love with my husband because I honestly was still in love with him. When someone walks out and you have had no lead up to it, it's very hard to catch up to that. And your heart is hurting. It's hard to write about that. And then it was hard to write about...
The experience I had in my social world, because I wanted to write about these things, but I didn't want to be pointing fingers and complaining. And it's very hard to keep that line and that equilibrium to be examining without really becoming just very gripey.
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Chapter 4: What family history does Belle Burden explore in her memoir?
But I think the main thing is that I hope that it encourages other women to tell their stories and to feel like they have a voice and that there is value actually in the telling of it. And that, you know, if there was more of that, I do think we would all be better off.
Well, the memoir is called Strangers. Belle Burden, thank you so much for joining us today. Thank you so much, Beth. I'm so happy to be here. Thank you. And now, book critic Suzanne Perez looks at a new novel that offers madcap comedy and oddball charm.
Sarah Levine's new comic novel, The Hitch, called to me with its insane but intriguing two-word premise, Ghost Corgi. In this delightfully unhinged story, we meet Rose Cutler, a Jewish feminist vegan eco-warrior who wants to have a bigger role in the life of her six-year-old nephew, Nathan.
Rose offers to look after her nephew while his parents take a week-long trip to Mexico, and all goes well until Rose and Nathan walk to the park. That's when Rose's Newfoundland, Walter, attacks and kills a corgi on a retractable leash. Those things are evil, you know. Retractable leashes, not corgis.
And soon after, Nathan starts yipping, barking, howling, overeating, and sticking his head out of the car window. Rose assumes the behavior is repressed trauma over witnessing the corgi's death. But Nathan insists he is not grieving, and the dog named Hazel is not really dead. Rather, her soul has leaped into his body and now lives inside him. Still with me?
I know it sounds nuts, but this novel is the perfect combination of madcap comedy, true emotion, and oddball charm. As a main character, Rose is both exhausting and endearing, a neurotic but lovable aunt who wants the best for her nephew but can't help overthinking. And she overthinks everything.
Sometimes my mind gets active as a prairie dog and I build elaborate tunnels underground, she says, room after room of judgment and justification. As she preps for Nathan's visit, Rose compiles a binder of vegan meal plans and spends hours searching for the perfect paint color to turn her guest room into a sanctuary.
She opts for an imported paint called Weavet, which means spider web in Dorset, and is almost white with a hint of gray. Nathan, unfazed, calls it the sweat sock room.
As she reluctantly acknowledges the ghost corgi inhabiting her nephew, Rose sets out to exorcise the spirit and put things in order with her job, his school, her troubled friendships, and every other aspect of her life before Nathan's parents return from their trip. The result is an absurd series of events that keeps you turning the pages, shaking your head, and often laughing out loud.
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Chapter 5: What patterns does Belle Burden identify in her family dynamics?
You aren't a published author. She gets drunk one night and writes a book, which becomes a bestseller. And we see that journey of how that book is in some ways taken from her as she is interviewed about it. People are reviewing it. There becomes a movie about it and how her vision is changed. just taken from her in a way through others' interpretations.
The other story that's happening is a story that she wrote, and it's about robots, and the world is ending, and one robot is trying to warn the other robots that the world is ending. So you have these going back and forth, and through the book, the question suddenly becomes, who writes stories? And it hits you closer to the end. It is a book where the whole time I was like, okay, okay.
And then when I got to the end, I was like, oh gosh, I need to talk to anyone and everyone about this. You can't say a lot about it because once it hits you, you're like, okay, but it's clever and thought provoking. And it really just asks, who are we? And who are we based on the stories that we tell and are told about us? I just thought it was lovely. It was such an interesting story.
And I think anyone of any genre would enjoy this one. Although it sits in the science fiction shelves, I think this is a book for everyone. I messaged a coworker at 3 a.m. when I finished it to ask them if they had read it yet. That is how much I loved that book. So it was just really fun.
Did the coworker answer?
Yeah.
She responded. It was our head buyer, actually. And I think she had told me about the book, but she hadn't read it. She sent me a message, I think, at 7 a.m. And she was just like, no, I haven't. But another coworker, when I got in the store that day, had read it because I was like, who has read this? And we were just like, this book is so great.
And it was just so much fun to talk about and enjoy and the excitement and the level of energy around it. I think is something that you don't get from every book, which is fine. You know, there's, there's different things that we experienced when we read books. And this was one where I felt I'm going to continue thinking about it for a while. So, yeah.
Okay, very good. Do you have anything else for us?
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Chapter 6: How does Belle Burden address the impact of her marriage's end?
So these girls are in a home together and their agency is taken away from them. So they decide to become witches and it is just about female rage and empowerment. And I found that exhilarating and as well as heartbreaking. So I had a lot of emotions reading this book and would recommend it to anyone. Last pick is going to be One Day Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This by Omar El-Akkad.
Omar El-Akkad is just a wonderful writer. He discusses world events while making it both accessible, applicable, and and palatable and that sounds so unusual I think because he isn't discussing things that are easy to discuss and I don't believe in any way he is watering them down or making them easy I think just the way that he writes it
engenders understanding and engenders grace and engenders truth. And so you're more focused on being in relationship with the book and being in relationship with everything that he's discussing from all different points of view. And it allows you to sit with it in a way that I don't think is overwhelming. And so that's how it's palatable. Not that it minimizes anything, but it shares it in a way
That allows you to be with it and not be overwhelmed, which I think in this world right now, the news can feel very overwhelming. Our world can feel very overwhelming. And this is a way to still be connected without feeling the weight of it oppressively.
Well, this segment has been edited for time. You can listen to our entire conversation and find a list of China's book recommendations from this episode of Marginalia at kmuw.org. China Reavers of Country Bookshelf in Bozeman, Montana, thank you so much for joining us today.
Thank you so much for having me. It's been wonderful just having the opportunity to chat about the books that I love and share them with all of you.
Marginalia was produced at KMUW Wichita and is part of the NPR Network. Our editors and producers for this week's show are Haley Krausen and Luann Stevens. Torrin Anderson composed our theme music. This is Marginalia. I'm Beth Golay.
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