Ex-Wife by Ursula Parrott

Published on 1 Aug 2024
 
'A forgotten classic: darkly funny and startlingly contemporary, full of witty one-liners and stop-you-in-your-tracks observations about romance, work, and life.' (Monica Heisey, Really Good, Actually). Lord, I have been more chased than chaste . .

It feels remarkable to be a deserted wife when one is only twenty-four. New York, 1924. Patricia and Peter are a thoroughly modern married couple.

Both drink. Both smoke. Both work.

Both believe in 'Love-Outside-Marriage'. Until they don't. Or, really, until he doesn't.

So when Peter pushes for divorce with increasing violence, Patricia has to forge a new life as a single woman: as an ex-wife. A sensational bestseller in 1929, yet utterly timeless, Ex-Wife plunges us into the 'era of the one-night stand'. It evokes not only the Manhattan bars, fashion advertising offices, female friendships and all-night parties of a dazzling city, but the hollow affairs, emotional hangovers, backstreet abortions, and struggles for sexual freedoms amidst the moral double standards of a patriarchal world.