Ex-Wife (Faber Editions) - Ursula Parrott

''A forgotten classic: darkly funny and startlingly contemporary, full of witty one-liners and stop-you-in-your-tracks observations about romance, work, and life.'' (Monica Heisey, Really Good, Actually).''I was floored: truly brilliant.'' (Meg Mason, Sorrow and Bliss)It feels remarkable to be a deserted wife when one is only twenty-four.New York, 1924. Patricia and Peter are a thoroughly modern married couple. Both drink. Both smoke. Both work. Both believe in ''Love-Outside-Marriage''. Until they don''t. Or, really, until he doesn''t. So when Peter pushes for divorce with increasing violence, Patricia has to forge a new life as a single woman: as an ex-wife.A sensational bestseller in 1929, yet utterly timeless, Ex-Wife plunges us into the ''era of the one-night stand''. It evokes not only the Manhattan bars, fashion advertising offices, female friendships and all-night parties of a dazzling city, but the hollow affairs, emotional hangovers, backstreet abortions, and struggles for sexual freedoms amidst the moral double standards of a patriarchal world.