"Split" | Her marriage is breaking up; she's cracking us up

"Split: A Memoir of Divorce"

by Suzanne Finnamore

Dutton, 255 pp., $24.95

BOOK REVIEW |

How can the memoir of a bitter divorce be so laugh-out-loud funny?

When Suzanne Finnamore is writing it. Finnamore, whose earlier novel "Otherwise Engaged" told the fictionalized story of her engagement to the man she now calls "N." in the nonfiction "Split," is funny even when her subject matter isn't.

When her husband walks out after five years of marriage and one toddler son, Finnamore observes: "This is much worse than losing a cat. You do not wish the cat dead, for example, after the first two days."

And when the writer's mother, Bunny, later asks her if she would ever marry again, here is the answer: "Right now, the base stupidity of the question seems astonishing. 'Do you think you'll try lion taming again? Only this time you'll be so much wiser — knowing everything you've learned. Don't you want to lion tame again? With that one good arm?' "

The chapters in this book, which Finnamore calls "gritty and absurd" in her foreword, are named for the five stages of grieving: denial, anger, bargaining, grief and acceptance. It's questionable whether anyone has ever taken divorce any harder: It requires oceans of alcohol and cigarettes, and many interventions (one involving a house call with three kinds of cake) by Finnamore's best friend Lisa, before the "acceptance" stage is reached. (Lisa, no fan of N., greets the news of the impending divorce with, "Doll, you have no idea how I have longed for this day.")

And along the way, things are harrowing. In the opening chapter, the soon-to-be ex-husband comes home from work, tells his wife she looks beautiful, drinks the martini she has prepared with three olives and tells her he wants a divorce. Next come the specifics: "The term visitation is brandished. He is talking about visiting our son, A., as though he were a wonderful exhibit."

At first crushed and battered by disbelief, Finnamore gradually begins to admit her own doubts about the marriage: the signs, which she has willfully ignored, that N. has long been unfaithful, even during the intense courtship that led to their wedding. Then there's that book of Zen poetry with the mysterious inscription, clearly from another woman. And just when the author thinks things couldn't get worse, N. takes her aside to tell her that his new girlfriend is pregnant. He's going to be a daddy again.

Gradually things get better, as Finnamore becomes resigned to the divorce and finds new ways to go forward: evenings with close friends, a trip to Paris, a symbolic afternoon pruning all the deadwood out of her garden. Despite the optimistic ending, however, this is still a book to give pause to straying husbands of women who write: Remember how you're going to look in print later on. (N. does not cut an attractive figure.) In this case, living well is not the best revenge: Writing well certainly is.