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Six weeks after she and her husband announced their divorce, Kimberly Harrington began work on a book that she thought would be about divorce, full of dark humor and a not-small amount of annoyance. After all, on the heels of planning to dissolve a twenty-year marriage, they had chosen to still live together in the same house with their kids.
Over the course of two years of what was supposed to be a temporary period of transition, she sifted through how she had formed her ideas about relationships, sex, marriage, and divorce. And she dug back into the history of her marriage—how she and her future ex-husband had met, what it felt like to be madly in love, how they changed, the impact that having children had on their relationship, and what they still owed each other.
But You Seemed So Happy is an honest, intimate biography of a marriage, from its heady, idealistic, and easy beginnings to its slowly coming apart, and finally to its evolution into something completely unexpected. As she probes what it means when everyone assumes you're happy as long as you're still married, Harrington skewers the casual way we make life-altering decisions when we're young. Ultimately, this moving and funny memoir-in-essays is an irreverent act of forgiveness—of ourselves, our partners, and the relationships that have run their course but will always hold a permanent place in our lives.
"An honest, tender, and often hilarious book on the end of a modern marriage. No matter your relationship status, But You Seemed So Happy begs the question, What are we all doing here? I laughed, I cried, I found myself in the pages over and over again." —Kate Baer, New York Times–bestselling author of What Kind of Woman: Poems
"Intimate and raw yet meticulously scrubbed of the slightest tinge of self-pity, Harrington explores the pain and intricacies of a marriage and its dissolution with a ruthless, unflinching honest and gallows humor that makes you feel like you buried a body with her." —Emily Flake, cartoonist for The New Yorker
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Creators
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Publisher
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Release date
March 19, 2024 -
Formats
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Kindle Book
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OverDrive Read
- ISBN: 9780062993328
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EPUB ebook
- ISBN: 9780062993328
- File size: 1496 KB
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Languages
- English
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Reviews
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July 12, 2021
In these piercing essays, Harrington (Amateur Hour) performs an autopsy on her deteriorating marriage and her decision to divorce her husband of 25 years. “We all hear the dramatic stories of divorce, but we don’t hear much about boring divorces. Or perfectly okay divorces,” she writes. Harrington’s divorce was just that: absolutely devoid of drama. There were no “affairs... nervous breakdowns,” just the realization that she simply wasn’t the same person as she was at 27, when she and her husband joined “The Path” of marriage that all their friends were on. Two children later (chronicled in a hilarious essay titled “Now That We’ve Had a Baby My Terms and Conditions Have Changed”) the passion faded, and, later, the “divorce conversations” set in. After much hand-wringing, though, Harrington and her husband both found peace in knowing their decision to end things was for the good of their kids, too: “Did I want them to learn about marriage from this marriage?” In her compassionate treatment of a touchy subject, Harrington flips the divorce narrative on its head to underscore the beauty of choosing one’s own path. Those struggling with the decision to stay or leave a marriage would do well to pick this up (and grab a highlighter). Agent: Ryan D. Harbage, the Fischer-Harbage Agency. -
September 1, 2021
Harrington's first book, Amateur Hour (2018), was a series of essays on motherhood, a topic that, she relates here, would light strangers' faces with interest whenever she revealed it. The topic of this book, divorce, tends to make people mumble vague condolences and wander away, she says. Those readers who do give Harrington a chance will be rewarded with chronological essays brimming with witty observations, biting humor, and thoughtful commentary on courtship, marriage, parenting, happiness, inertia, and yes, divorce, all accompanied by insightful anecdotes about her 25-year marriage to the nicest guy on the planet. This is neither a bitter screed nor a heartbreaking sob story, but rather a brutally honest, revealing account of how two people came together, followed an expected path, consciously evaluated their relationship, and decided to end their marriage (although Harrington and her husband still live together with their two teenagers). Like many, Harrington wonders what the post-pandemic future will bring. Readers will be rooting for her, and hope that she has truly found contentment and happiness.COPYRIGHT(2021) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
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