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I had such high hopes for this rediscovered novel but it was a slog. I'd heard about it through an article in The New York Times (I think?), and the journalist compared it to The Great Gatsby and even alluded to it maybe being better? Well, I can say that is false. The writing in no way compares to Fitzgerald's iconic novel. When I read Gatsby for the first time, the prose is what made me fall in love with it. It wasn't the characters (who are awful) or the plot (which is depressing AF). It was the writing. Passages like this: "Out of the corner of his eye Gatsby saw that the blocks of the sidewalks really formed a ladder and mounted to a secret place above the trees--he could climb it, if he climbed alone, and once there he could suck on the pap of life, gulp down the incomparable milk of wonder." No such lines exist in Ex-Wife. Instead, the writing is merely expository.
On the plus side, this novel did give me a fuller picture of what it was like to be a woman in the 1920s, feeling liberated with new laws, suffrage, etc. while still expected to abide by old Victorian mores. The amount of slut-shaming our protagonist gets while her equally slutty ex-husband does not is enough to make a feminist out of anyone. The double standard is made stark in this novel. Both parties behave badly, but somehow Peter is allowed to move on and get remarried, while Patricia must ATONE before she can move on. I think this novel does a really excellent job at demonstrating just how constricted women still were despite the sense of freedom the decade inspires. For that depiction, it gets the three stars.
On the plus side, this novel did give me a fuller picture of what it was like to be a woman in the 1920s, feeling liberated with new laws, suffrage, etc. while still expected to abide by old Victorian mores. The amount of slut-shaming our protagonist gets while her equally slutty ex-husband does not is enough to make a feminist out of anyone. The double standard is made stark in this novel. Both parties behave badly, but somehow Peter is allowed to move on and get remarried, while Patricia must ATONE before she can move on. I think this novel does a really excellent job at demonstrating just how constricted women still were despite the sense of freedom the decade inspires. For that depiction, it gets the three stars.