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The publisher calls this a “debut romantic comedy” but I would call it more a “debut end of romance comedy.” As the title points out, this is a book about a divorce, which inherently means a lack of romance. Quibbling aside, it is a very charming, humorous look at a necessary evil of society.
Anne Sophie Diehl (Sophie) is our unlikely heroine, a young criminal attorney working for a small but prestigious law firm. Maria Meiklejohn Durkheim (Mia) is a potential divorce client.
Mia’s father is one of the firm’s oldest and most important clients, so because their divorce attorneys are not available when she wants to come in, they push Sophie into doing the intake interview. She has no interest or desire or worse yet, experience, in handling a divorce, but her boss David, doesn’t give her a choice. He gives her a form to fill out and off she goes. Mia and Sophie hit it off, and Mia insists on using Sophie as her lawyer despite her protestations of incompetence. David forces her into it and oversees the case, and Mia is happy with the double billing for using both lawyers.
Sophie not only doesn’t want to do it, she has her own issues with divorce. Her mother is a famous mystery writer from France, and her father is a Marxist history professor at Columbia, and Sophie felt their divorce in the usual, negative, life changing, devastating way. As a child of divorce myself, I totally bought it.
The Durkheims are comfortable. Dr. Durkheim runs a pediatric oncology unit at the local hospital, and Mia comes from a very wealthy family. It is Dr. Durkheim who wants the divorce, and Mia and their daughter Jane are devastated. Durkheim hires the local divorce attorney with the worst reputation, and the game begins.
By now you must be wondering, where is the comedy? Well, I’ll tell you. The characters, particularly Sophie and Mia, are wonderfully warm, smart and funny. And a lot of the comedy comes from the format of the book.
This is an epistolary novel. If you are not familiar, Encyclopedia Britannica defines it as “a novel told through the medium of letters written by one or more of the characters.” In this case, there are emails, letters (some hand written,) legal documents, the occasional newspaper clipping and so on. It is an unusual format but one which I really enjoy. For one thing, the book moves really fast. For another, it makes everything that happens, and all the characters, seem very intimate and familiar.
To be fair, there is a bit of romance; Sophie has a history of bad relationships but ends up on a promising note. So while I still wouldn’t call it a romance, I would call it a fast, fun read.
4/14 Stacy Alesi, AKA the BookBitch
THE DIVORCE PAPERS by Susan Rieger. Crown (March 18, 2014). ISBN 978-0804137447. 480p.
Posted by Stacy Alesi 
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