By all accounts, Suzanne
Finnamore was a success. She wrote bestsellers about engagement and childbirth,
got regular assignments from glossy magazines like O and New
York, and
doted on her toddler son. The day her husband walked out on her, she became a
different kind of writer. Split abandons the mask of
fictional characters Finnamore used in previous books to deliver her wry
observations on relationships, and it taps into the raw pain of the
first-person singular. While her five-stages-of-grief memoir is a bit
overproduced, sometimes obscuring her keen insight under a blanket of
too-clever writers' tricks, Finnamore nevertheless immerses readers in the
frustrating, cathartic, day-to-day task of moving on from betrayal.
Of course it was another
woman. Although in the "denial" stage, Finnamore refuses to believe
it, she eventually accepts that the random book of poetry delivered to her
house and the Cole Porter lyrics jotted on the cocktail napkin meant all along
that her husband didn't wait until he moved out to get on with his romantic
life. The most wrenching parts of the book deal with Finnamore's fury at the
new squeeze she calls Thing Woman, and her attempt to shield her young son from
her poisonous rage. In another poignantly specific segment, she recounts a
consequence of her new career as a divorce columnist: going on a television show
to talk about her work, and being blindsided by portions of her wedding video
in the B-roll used to introduce her. Objects, words, people, memories,
souvenirs, and restless ideas all conspire against Finnamore's reach for
serenity and a new, post-marriage paradigm.
Sometimes Split achieves the simplicity
that allows readers direct access to Finnamore's experiences. But the book
suffers from a heavily workshopped feel, from the witty-bitter dialogue between
the author and her girlfriends that's been punched up in post-production to the
structure of slivered vignettes arranged with literary disregard for context
and chronology. There's a Split that's less writerly and
more immediate hiding inside the one Finnamore ultimately delivers. But some of
her anecdotes and moments of clarity break through the layers of technique. In
spite of its flaws, the book reveals a side of divorce that's absorbing,
frightening, and very occasionally hopeful.