Strangers by Belle Burden

 

Summary (from the publisher): It was a great love story, one for the ages. The speed of our beginning and the speed of our ending felt like matching bookends. They both came out of nowhere. He wanted it, he wanted me. And then he didn’t.

In March 2020, Belle Burden was safe and secure with her family at their house on Martha’s Vineyard, navigating the early days of the pandemic together—building fires in the late afternoons, drinking whisky sours, making roast chicken. Then, with no warning or explanation, her husband of twenty years announced that he was leaving her. Overnight, her caring, steady partner became a man she hardly recognized. He exited his life with her like an actor shrugging off a costume.

In Strangers, Burden revisits her marriage, searching for clues that her husband was not who she always thought he was. As she examines her relationship through a new lens, she reckons with her own family history and the lessons she intuited about how a woman is expected to behave in the face of betrayal. Through all of it, she is transformed. The discreet, compliant woman she once was—someone nicknamed “Belle the Good”—gives way to someone braver, someone determined to use her voice.

With unflinching honesty and profound grace, Burden charts a path through heartbreak to show the power of a woman who refuses to give up on love. Strangers is a stunning, deeply moving, compulsively readable memoir heralding the arrival of a thrilling new literary talent.

Review: I had heard a lot about this memoir and was honestly not expecting it to be a full five stars for me. This is a sadly familiar story - wealthy husband behaves badly and discards his wife in favor of a new model. But author Belle Burden tells her story with such compelling honesty, ruthless reflection, and lyrical language that I was fully reeled in. 

One thing that stands out about this story compared to others is the abrupt nature of her husband's departure, that took place in the height of the Covid lockdown no less. One day, she was happily married, the next her husband was gone. Many similar stories feel littered with warning flags, at least in hindsight, but her husband seems loving and warm and all in until, at the drop of a dime, he wasn't anymore. Further, the appalling coldness following his decision was shocking to me, particularly when it comes to his children. His steadfast refusal to have any shared custody of their three children and insistence that she retain full custody felt so heartless. He was not only rejecting his marriage but everything about the life he had built for decades. 

I really admired the author's ability to tell this story in such a thoughtful way. While she doesn't shirk away from describing fully her feelings, she tells her story in a way that feels stripped of anger or vindictiveness. While obviously this is her side of the story, she takes pains to detail her flaws and things she wishes she had done better in such a way that it didn't fell fully one-sided. She was passive, too trusting, too removed from the finances of the marriage, too accepting of the more mysterious elements of her husband. 

I also don't usually approach memoirs expecting such beautiful and lyrical language. The author opens up each section of her memoir with images of the ospreys that live outside their Martha Vineyard estate, making obvious comparisons between the bonded pair and her marriage in a way that felt so moving and beautiful. The arrangement of the story, and the way she slowly unfolds her marriage and background was very artfully done in a way that fully engaged me.

A note that one criticism leveled again the author's story is her privileged background, which is undeniable. She comes from a wealthy family with immense connections. As a young newlywed, her mother was featured in Vogue magazine multiple times and her father was drawn by Andy Warhol and worked for Robert F. Kennedy for a while. She inherited trusts to buy her homes and had the luxury of quitting her job as a lawyer to be a stay-at-home mom. But I think this is all further evidence to me that money can never buy you happiness or true security. Even in her Martha's Vineyard summer estate, she was gripped by heartbreak, and her story is still valid and worth telling, even while we acknowledge that she had infinitely more resources and options than many wronged wives. 

I switched back and forth between the physical and the audio for this one. On the one hand, the audio is read by the author herself, which added another level of personal storytelling to this book. But on the other hand, I loved being able to savor and fully absorb the lyrical writing through eyeball reading it. Truly can't go wrong with either format and I'm glad I got a taste of both. 

Stars: 5