Ex-Wife

Besides the pounding misogyny, the most salient aspect is the forced disproportionate gravity of literal adolescent relationships when you marry the first person you want to ‘bun’. Negging and body commentary is standard on all fronts. Surprisingly not full-on racist, just a bit escaped. Feminist is a slur. Soap opera turns. The correspondence between the protagonist and her great love in her supposed mature phase at 27 is unflattering. I appreciated the supportive friendships and the confronting of wearying subjects that endure, lack of safe access to abortion, the debts that are considered owed for male attention. One of her closest friends, her asexual future husband who inherits millions, explains her appeal to him: “I don’t think about you as female. You’re decorative, like a well-bred young collie pup… and besides you laugh at things and like to look at pictures.” It’s a record of a side of New York in 1929.