What a wonderful book. 

I’ve been after a second-hand copy of this for literally years, and was delighted when I saw it was being re-issued.

New York. Patricia and her husband Pete hit the rocks over mutual infidelity among other things, and separate, Pete wanting a divorce. Pat, unable to divest herself of her love and sexual longing for Pete tries to anaesthetise herself with endless casual sex and ceaseless drinking. 

The twist?  This book is 95 years old, this is Jazz Age New York, the New York of Scott Fitzgerald, Damon Runyon, and Dorothy Baker. The ‘new morality’ has swept away the grim stodginess of the preceding generations and, reeling from the horrors of the Great War, the young folk have pleasure at the top of their agenda.

This new age promises freedom and opportunity for women, and indeed delivers some, but - as Pete Doggett showed in Growing Up, his study of sex in the “permissive age” of the sixties - such revolutions in morality always serve men’s interests far better than they serve women, from shorter hemlines to one-night stands as a common end to a fine night out. 

Men still called the shots, and defined the boundaries. 

This is the landscape Pat, who still believes in - and hopes for - love and constancy has to navigate with her soul closed, numbed with drink.

Parrott’s writing is darkly wry, and very clear-eyed about the realities and inequalities of married life, the troublesome practicalities of Pat’s single life, and her limed opportunities for the future. Pat’s voice feels so contemporary, and strikes the same resounding notes now as it clearly did then. 

Also, Ex-Wife contains the best use of music I have ever encountered in a book.

Fabulous, amusing, and affecting.

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