“Breakup is one of the angriest and most honest books
I have ever read. I found it, by turns, disturbing, exhilarating, mesmerizing, and always utterly impossible to put down.”
Anne Lamott, authot of Bird by Bird and Crooked Little Heart.
“Breakup is an achingly true and uncomfortable bare account of the pain that only love- long, fruitful, complicated loved- can inflict. But the surprise in Texier’s recollection of the end is her generosity
of spirit, her soul-mining attempts to understand and empathize with the man who is betraying her and to even imagine the position of the dreaded other woman. With direct, immediate prose, meted out like bulletins from the frontlines of heartbreak, Texier takes the story
of a woman scorned and turns it into the memoir
of a human triumphant – and delivers and unputdownable book at the same time.”
Elizabeth Wurtzel, author of Prozac Nation and Bitch.
“Read this book and then shelve it next to Elizabeth Smart’s By Grand Central Station.”
Evening Standard (London)
“The most extraordinarily riveting documentary
of a marriage gone wrong… a book which – rare among contemporary American memoirs – feels true.”
Joanna Cole. The Times (London)
1/3
Excerpted reviews:
“Breakup reads less like an American memoir and more like an intimate European novel. The details of Texier’s unraveling love affair of a marriage are perfectly recognizable. She tells her story – the erotic couplings, the intellectual and emotional uncoupling – in a language that mirrors the narrator’s state of loss. The beauty of this work is that Texier never regrets having loved so well.” Whitney Otto, author of How to Make an American Quiet and The Passion Dream Book.
“In Breakup, a diary becomes a shield, a weapon, a witness. The memoir’s real subject, though, is the erotics of loss, the white heat of sexual passion as a marriage burns. Raw and unflinching, Breakup is sure to stir fierce discussion about the politics of obsession within a marriage (and the role a private diary plays in catching it all).” Alexandra Johnson, author of The Hidden Writer.
“Reading this book is equal to an act of voyeurism, and as with all such acts, ultimately we read to see if we can recognize ourselves. Texier’s book/diary of betrayal is an open, emotional account of our deepest fears as women, as lovers, and, ultimately, as humans.” Lucy Greayl, Author of Autobiography of a Face.
2/3
“Extraordinary, one of the best things I have read this year.” Marianne MacDonald, Observer (London)
“Powerful – illegitimate… as good as Elizabeth Smart’s classic, By Grand Central Station I sat Down and Wept… as good as Nora Ephron’s Heartburn… a work that stands as a definitive statement of love and loss in this age of therapy. [It deals] with exquisite personal pain, of a kind I’d thought women no longer felt… elegantly, poetically written.” Fay Weldon. The New York Observer
“Savage as samurai, inexorable as Greek tragedy, this searingly open, sweet-sour journal from a French-born New York writer charts the end of her eighteen-year marriage… Texier’s revenge is assured. From the sound of him, he’ll never write a book as potent or humming-bird brilliant as this.” Ruth Padel. Mail on Sunday (London)
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