Ex-Wife is a 1929 novel written by
Ursula Parrott
Ursula Parrott (March 26, 1899Radcliffe College, Yearbook' (1920): 67. via Hathi Trust – September 1957), was a prolific modern novelist, screenwriter, and short story writer whose sensational first novel, ''Ex-Wife (Ursula Parrott), Ex-Wife'' ( ...
and reissued by
McNally Editions in 2023 with an afterword by Marc Parrott, the author's son, and a foreword by Alissa Bennett, a writer for the
Paris Review
''The Paris Review'' is a quarterly English-language literary magazine established in Paris in 1953 by Harold L. Humes, Peter Matthiessen, and George Plimpton. In its first five years, ''The Paris Review'' published new works by Jack Kerouac, ...
.
[ "''Ex-Wife''" is discussed on pages 118-119]
About the book
The book was a commercial success in 1929, and it maintained its success throughout the depression era 1930s, but fell out of print. It was reissued in 1989 and again in 2023. It was originally published anonymously "to underscore the salaciousness of its material."
[ Shortly after the book’s publication, the media began hunting for the author's identity, and whether the protagonist’s portrayal was actually fictional, somewhat autobiographical or was critiquing a culture undergoing tectonic shifts.][ By August 1929, the year of this book's publication, the successful sleuthing revealed the author to be " Katherine Ursula Parrott, a journalist and fashion writer..."][
The book also became a movie, “]The Divorcee
''The Divorcee'' is a 1930 American pre-Code drama film written by Nick Grindé, John Meehan, and Zelda Sears, based on the 1929 novel '' Ex-Wife'' by Ursula Parrott. It was directed by Robert Z. Leonard, who was nominated for the Academy ...
,” starring Norma Shearer
Edith Norma Shearer (August 11, 1902June 12, 1983) was a Canadian-American actress who was active on film from 1919 through 1942. Shearer often played spunky, sexually liberated women. She appeared in adaptations of Noël Coward, Eugene O'Neill, ...
, who won an Oscar
Oscar, OSCAR, or The Oscar may refer to:
People and fictional and mythical characters
* Oscar (given name), including lists of people and fictional characters named Oscar, Óscar or Oskar
* Oscar (footballer, born 1954), Brazilian footballer ...
for her role.
Synopsis
A young woman named Patricia finds herself in the ambiguous space between marriage and divorce.[ The novel is set in New York City during the Jazz Age, and it explores the themes of female independence, sexual liberation, and the changing social mores of the time. A thread that runs throughout the story for Patricia is profound loss resulting in loneliness. After Patricia's open marriage fails, alcohol induced binges, multiple one night stands, and affairs become a mainstay.][ There is also the cultural dissonance between ]Victorian morality
Victorian morality is a distillation of the moral views of the middle class in 19th-century Britain, the Victorian era.
Victorian values emerged in all social classes and reached all facets of Victorian living. The values of the period—which ...
, carried into the new century, and the emerging sexual freedom that encompasses the permissibility of casual sex.[ Also, as a distraction from her devastating losses, Patricia "buys clothes she can’t afford; she gets facials and has her hair done; she listens to songs on repeat while wearily wondering why heartache always seems to bookend love."][
]
References
Further reading
* 312 pages. .
External links
* {{Official website, https://www.mcnallyeditions.com/books/p/ex-wife
American novels adapted into films
1929 American novels
Simon & Schuster books
Novels set in the 1920s
20th-century American women writers
Novels set in New York City
Novels set in the Roaring Twenties
Modernist novels
Works about the Roaring Twenties
Novels about infidelity