Volume 29, Number 13 · August 12, 1982

Rite of Passage

By Diane Johnson
Life After Marriage: Love in an Age of Divorce
by A. Alvarez

Simon and Schuster, 269 pp., $14.50

Marriage, Love, Sex and Divorce
by Jonathan Gathorne-Hardy

Summit Books, 384 pp., $14.95

Perhaps it is better to marry than to burn, but there can be little doubt that it is sometimes better to burn, however slowly, than to try to quench the flame with a very wet book. Grudges usually become novels, or even works of popsociology with theses—brown rice, open marriage, total chastity. Either is preferable, it seems, where a subject like divorce is concerned, to the more permissive form A. Alvarez has chosen; a 'critical meditation' has the form of a sleepless night.



Review, 2027 words

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