CBR Bingo: Sheep, because while reading this I did feel a lot like I’d been a bit of a sheeple and Belle had been too
hot take: Can you get upset at someone for doing something stupid that you yourself did?
longer take: I don’t know how to review this book in detail without getting into some personal history and details that, honestly, I don’t think about that much and are pretty well resolved in my conscious and subconscious. And yet I didn’t pick this up at first because, well, even the minor blurb brought back some of the messiness that I’ve worked hard to put behind me, and I didn’t know what possibly I could get out of a book like this.
Then my friend Aileen recommended it to me with the caveat that it might bring up some uncomfortable feelings. Oddly enough, feeling like I’d have someone who was with me through it (virtually, at least) whom I could discuss my take made me want to pick it up, and then I skipped right through it on my red eye when I should have been sleeping.
As profiled in what feels like every media website on the planet but which I saw on the NYT, Belle Burden is a true child of wealth and privilege who went through a nasty divorce and wrote this book as a way to…process it? put her story out there, to give others validation? gain income and financial independence after forgoing it for years? It’s mildly unclear, even after reading it, but what is clear i that the NYTimes would have and did absolutely LOVE the idea of a socialite’s daughter peeling back the covers on her sordid society split.
Burden was en route to a normal law firm job when she runs into James, who sweeps her off her feet and plunges her into what was probably always going to be her life, aka that of a stay at home mother. The only difference here is that Burden came with two large trusts from her side of the family, which allowed her to purchase the family their Manhattan apartment and their Hamptons (?) / Long Island (?) summer house, which is where the book starts, mid-COVID. Everything seems fine, and then one day, seemingly out of nowhere, Burden realizes that James is having an affair. That’s all fine and dare I say normal, but the twist comes next, when James announces that he’s done with the marriage–and with being a father.
There are two utterly salacious things in this novel that keep you hooked. The first is Burden’s utter abrogation of her fiscal duty to herself. Again and again, at every turn, you’re screaming into the void as how how someone with her own lawyers and who used to be a lawyer and with wealth could end up in a situation where her spouse walks away with enormous acquired wealth AND a 50% stake in properties that you purchased outright.
Then again, should you be screaming? (should I be screaming, as someone who threw sums of money that she would rather not properly tally, ever, to get out of a situation that felt like molasses and begin the process of cleaning herself off? Am I being harsh on myself for equating our situations, or am I glancing at the too-bright sun of honesty that tells me that I did inadvisable things and have to own them) Maybe not. If you’re swearing to have to hold until death do you part, what is the point of self-preservation?
The second part, though, I feel could be without precedent. Because there’s no “mom and dad might not love each other, but we both love you.” The trope flies out the window because James announces he’s actively choosing not to ask for custody, and would prefer to be an absent patriarch sort of dad. In some sense he’s almost trying to relinquish parental rights and become a kindly uncle, and even still, ~300 pages later and having digested this book I am utterly incapable of understanding how the James that Burden describes–the one who struggled with loneliness and lack of family structure and stability–could openly say he doesn’t really want a relationship with his kids (teenagers, all) and then proceed to rent a separate apartment that lacks space for them to stay.
All that aside, as I said at the outset, I’m still uncertain as to what Burden meant with this novel. I don’t think she was looking to make high-class gossip pages, but at the end of the day that’s pretty much what I got from it.
