Seven novels to change the way you think about divorce

Amy Shearn is the award-winning author of the critically acclaimed novels Dear Edna Sloane, Unseen City, The Mermaid of Brooklyn, and How Far is the Ocean From Here. She has worked as an editor for Medium, and her work has appeared in the New York Times Modern Love column, Slate, Real Simple, Martha Stewart Living, Oprah, Coastal Living, Poets & Writers, Literary Hub, Catapult, The Millions, The Rumpus, and many other publications.

Shearn has an MFA from the University of Minnesota, and currently lives in Brooklyn with her two children.

Her new novel is Animal Instinct.

[The Page 99 Test: How Far Is the Ocean from Here; Writers Read: Amy Shearn (March 2013); Q&A with Amy Shearn; My Book, The Movie: Dear Edna Sloane; The Page 69 Test: Dear Edna Sloane; The Page 69 Test: Animal Instinct; Writers Read: Amy Shearn (March 2025); My Book, The Movie: Animal Instinct]

At Electric Lit Shearn tagged "seven novels that each made me think about divorce—and life—a little differently." One title on the list:

Hot Air by Marcy Dermansky

There is nothing like the funny frankness of a Marcy Dermansky novel, in which absurd circumstances tend to befall the most complex and yet oddly relatable women. I considered highlighting The Red Car here, Dermansky’s 2016 book about an unhappily married woman on the run in a cursed red car haunted by her dead boss (obviously), of which the author has said, “I think I was writing a case for divorce with this book.” But the prolific Dermansky has a new addition to the divorce novel canon with Hot Air, which opens with the divorced protagonist going on her first date in seven years: “Joannie was not certain how the date was going… She had never been on a proper date with her ex-husband even before they were married. He had just sort of worn her down, so clearly in love with her. And that was a big chunk of her life. Her marriage. Years and years of her life. Stolen.” The first date in question is interrupted by, you guessed it, a hot air balloon piloted by a squabbling married couple crashing into a swimming pool. (What, you didn’t guess that?) Joanie’s introduction to her post-divorce desire is thus defined by an unexpected adventure she embarks on with these unhappy billionaires – and Cesar Aira-level coincidences, as the husband turns out to be the person Joanie had her first kiss with back at summer camp as a child. Proof that life after divorce can be very, very surprising.

Read about another novel on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue