Synopses & Reviews
Isabel Gillies had a wonderful lifea handsome, intelligent, loving husband who was a professor; two glorious toddlers; a beautiful house in their Midwestern college town; the time and place to express all her ebullience and affection and optimism. Suddenly, the life Isabel had made crumbled. Her husband, Josiah, announced that he was leaving her and their two young sons. "Happens every day," said a friend.
Far from a self-pitying diatribe, Happens Every Day reads like an intimate conversation between friends. It is a dizzyingly can-did, compulsively readable, ultimately redemptive story about love, marriage, family, heartbreak, and the unexpected turns of a life. On the one hand, reading this book is like watching a train wreck. On the other hand, as Gillies herself says, it is about trying to light a candle instead of cursing the darkness, and loving your life even if it has slipped away.
Review
"What a strange and wonderful surprise: a gorgeous, funny, exuberant book about the disastrous end of a marriage. A loss like Gillies's might happen all the time, but it's rarely met with the passion, compassion, energy, and warmth that suffuse every page. With charming candor, she lays bare her sorrow and her joys, and finds a true -- and instructive -- talent for transformation and happiness." -- Maile Meloy, author of Both Ways Is the Only Way I Want It and A Family Daughter
Review
"A memoir so raw you feel like it's your best friend telling you her story." -- Glamour, ("Must-Read" pick)
Review
"I couldn't put the book down and ... my husband ... couldn't put it down either... Compulsive and, frankly, chilling late-night reading." -- Maureen Corrigan, Fresh Air on National Public Radio
Review
"Gillies movingly evokes the salt-on-wound sadness of loving a spouse turned stranger." -- People (three stars)
Review
"A smart, rueful memoir of love, betrayal and survival." -- O, the Oprah magazine
Review
"I couldn't help but admire her bravery... Good-humored, self-effacing...You feel nothing but deepest sympathy." -- Ruth David Konigsberg, Elle
Review
"Emotionally involving... There's a redemptive grace in [Gillies'] struggle." -- Entertainment Weekly
About the Author
Isabel Gillies, known for her television role as Detective Stabler’s wife on Law and Order: Special Victims Unit and for her cinematic debut in the film Metropolitan, graduated from New York University with a BFA in film. She lives in Manhattan with her second husband, her two sons, and her stepdaughter.