Divorce: An Oral Portrait - Hardcover

George Feifer

9781565842724: Divorce: An Oral Portrait

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1565842723 ISBN 13: 9781565842724

Publisher: New Pr, 1995

Divorce is not a sociological or psychological study of the causes of divorce, but a compelling account of those directly involved. Feifer interviewed a whole range of people whose lives have been altered by divorce - dozens of former husbands and wives as well as divorce lawyers and therapists, children of divorce, and divorce court judges. Their collected stories, in their own words and colored by their own memories, offer a startling and unprecedented view of divorce from those on the inside: a man who finds himself separated from his kids by a technicality in his settlement, a woman who overcomes a deadbeat husband and months of poverty to raise six kids and become a CEO, a man unhappy in his marriage who finds his soulmate shortly after his twenty-fifth anniversary, and a couple who describe their divorce from two very different perspectives.
Divorce is absolutely compelling reading for anyone even peripherally touched by a phenomenon that has changed the very meaning of family and marriage.

"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.

About the Author:

George Feifer, a writer born in New Jersey, was no stranger to divorce, including his parents. But his own trauma after twenty-two years of marriage left him deeply depressed, even though hed initiated the proceedings. In that state, he began recognizing men and women who shared it, then or earlier. Their painful, moving stories comprise the substance of this book.

From Publishers Weekly:

This collection of 37 interviews with divorced men and women, lawyers, mediators, judges and counselors emphasizes the wrenching emotions inherent in divorce, but these anecdotes provide no real enlightenment about the causes of marital breakups. Feifer, a writer (Tennozan: The Battle of Okinawa and the Atomic Bomb) who went through his own divorce, makes no claims of expertise or comprehensiveness, but states that recounting his personal experience eased the pain. Pain relief seems also to have been the motivation of his interviewees, who, with few exceptions, are confined to middle-and upper-middle-class whites. The intervention of counselors and mediators made for better relationships between divorced parents and their children; but it is obvious from the comments of the lawyers and their disillusioned clients that the confrontational and occasionally vengeful tactics of the attorneys did more harm than good.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.