"Time," Smith writes, "has picked up somehow, roaring along like a furious current," and the intervening years have startled them with feminism, wrinkles, weight, divorce, affairs, hysterectomies and menopause.
Her personal story - marriage, divorce, affairs, motherhood, artistry - is told without sentimentality; Ruehl is captivating as a woman who understands she's destined to be "exotic," and willing to pay the price.
Sexting, teenage pregnancy, drinking, divorces, affairs, vandalism and occasional brutal cruelties are not off limits.
She is concerned with the drama of women writing; the lives she describes are filled with abortions, divorces, affairs, unhappy marriages, postpartum depressions and suicides.
While divorces, affairs, showy expenditures, dimwitted comments and exploitation of the Windsor connection for private gain have tarnished the reputations of her children and their spouses, the queen has remained a dignified if grim presence through it all.
But while divorces, affairs, showy expenditures, dimwitted comments and exploitation of the Windsor connection for private gain may have called the reputations of some family members into question, the queen has remained a dignified and unassailable presence through it all.
In keeping with the turbulent lives of the soap's characters, the family has dealt with divorce, death, affairs, feuds, bankruptcy and homosexuality in the past nine years.
At the same time, she realizes that her and her siblings' obsession with their parents — their divorce, their affairs, their unorthodox habits and bizarre theories — has magically receded, that their parents no longer dominate the landscape of their lives.
With the protections of No Fault Divorce laws, affairs no longer entitle betrayed spouses to more marital assets, but some lawyers assert that there are still ways to exploit the situation: if the cheater feels guilty, betrayal can be used as emotional leverage to get more out of the settlement.
There's always a divorce, an affair, or unhappy people somewhere, and while that's more probably realistic, The #1 Rule For Girls was such a HAPPY book, it made me smile!
Is she thinking of the out-of-character risk she once took, a brief affair long ago with the husband of a woman who had been a close friend, and the chain of events — the shaky couple's subsequent divorce — the affair may have set in motion?
