Happens Every Day: An All-Too-True Story
by Isabel Gillies
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Book Summary Information
Author: Isabel GilliesEdition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2009-03-24
ISBN: 1439110077
Number of pages: 261
Publisher: Scribner
Product features:
- Memoir of modern life
Book Reviews of Happens Every Day: An All-Too-True Story
Book Review: Heartbreaking, Engrossing and Gut-Wrenching Window Into Divorce and Infidelity
Summary: 5 Stars
I just finished this book in one sitting and it is a poignant, yet somehow never pitying (in fact, I think she was quite hard on herself), story of how your life can fall apart in an instant--and how the practical, physical act of separating and acceptance of that inevitability that the life you thought was forever is now over, seems endless. It was heart-rending to read, but so engrossing I couldn't put it down. An extraordinary account, if only for the utter (sadly) commonplace-ness of the subject matter. This one will stay with me a long, long time.
And for those who find Ms. Gillies actions, as she describes them in this book, off-putting or unrealistic ... I (sincerely) hope you never have to be in her shoes. And I hope that people in your real life who come to you in emotional agony get better treatment, and less snarky judgement, than that offered by some reviewers.
Yes, I noticed the interior decorating mentions, but felt it was a manifestation of her love for the home they'd created together (magnified even more after she lost it, I'm sure). Besides, rich, poor or somewhere in between (and definitions about each vary based on background/experience): pain is pain. No one "deserves" a divorce, no matter what kind of wallpaper they purchased. And as for the swearing ... Well, few divorces, especially those predicated on infidelity, pass without nastiness. (I also couldn't help but think when reading those reviews: It's a story of a man who has left multiple wives, with his children, for other women, and the part that bothers your moral center is the language? Seriously?!)
This book details a time in Ms. Gillies life when she was very, very desperate--a wholly understandable state given the circumstances. To assume that is the author's constant condition is unfair, and unrealistic. (Think of yourself at your absolute worst moment, whatever it may be. Is that the time, the emotions, the actions YOU'D like to be judged on?) It's not that Ms. Gillies didn't really know her husband was having an affair ... It's that she didn't WANT to know. She was trying very hard NOT to know--fighting her own instincts, and even debasing herself, in an effort to keep her family, which included two children under the age of three, intact. (And if you can't find some empathy for that, you have a heart of steel.) As the title says, that's a drama that happens every day, to women of all classes and stripes.
I will agree with other reviewers in that this is NOT a story about revelations--not into why a marriage crumbles, or how to survive that failure. It's simply a pitch-perfect portrait of pain and confusion and children caught in the crossfire when a man decides he's "fallen out of love" with one woman, and into the arms of another.
The devastation left in the wake of his "choice" is all too relatable and raw because it really does "Happen Every Day."
Summary of Happens Every Day: An All-Too-True Story
Isabel Gillies had a wonderful life?a handsome, intelligent, loving husband who was a professor; two glorious toddlers; a beautiful house in their Midwestern college town; the time and place to express all her ebullience and affection and optimism. Suddenly, the life Isabel had made crumbled. Her husband, Josiah, announced that he was leaving her and their two young sons. "Happens every day," said a friend.Far from a self-pitying diatribe, Happens Every Day reads like an intimate conversation between friends. It is a dizzyingly can-did, compulsively readable, ultimately redemptive story about love, marriage, family, heartbreak, and the unexpected turns of a life. On the one hand, reading this book is like watching a train wreck. On the other hand, as Gillies herself says, it is about trying to light a candle instead of cursing the darkness, and loving your life even if it has slipped away.
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