Susan Rieger

A cynical young law associate shares the story of a humiliated woman's high-profile divorce through emails, letters, transcripts, and articles.

A Novel

The Divorce Papers

Sparkling and sophisticated, this sometimes hilarious, sometimes heartbreaking debut novel tells the story of a very messy, very high-profile divorce and the endearingly cynical young lawyer dragooned into handling it. Twenty-nine-year-old Sophie Diehl is happy toiling away as a criminal law associate at an old-line New England firm, where she very much appreciates that most of her clients are trapped behind bars. Everyone at Traynor, Hand knows she abhors face-to-face contact, but one week, with all the big partners out of town, Sophie is stuck handling the intake interview for the daughter of the firm’s most important client. After eighteen years of marriage, Mayflower descendant Mia Meiklejohn Durkheim has just been served divorce papers in a humiliating scene at the popular local restaurant, Golightly’s. Mia is now locked and loaded to fight her eminent and ambitious husband, Dr. Daniel Durkheim, Chief of the Department of Pediatric Oncology at Mather Medical School, for custody of their ten-year-old daughter Jane. Mia also burns to take him down a peg. Sophie warns Mia that she’s never handled a divorce case before, but Mia can’t be put off. The way she sees it, it’s her first divorce, too. For Sophie, the whole affair will spark a hard look at her own relationships—with her parents, colleagues, friends, lovers, and, most important, herself. A rich, layered novel told entirely through personal correspondence, office memos, e-mails, articles, handwritten notes, and legal documents, The Divorce Papers offers a direct window into the lives of an entertaining cast of characters never shy about speaking their minds. Original and captivating, Susan Rieger’s brilliantly conceived and expertly crafted debut races along with wit, heartache, and exceptional comedic timing, as it explores the complicated family dynamic that results when marriage fails—as well as the ever-present risks and coveted rewards of that thing called love.

Amy Maddess

The format was cool but there wasn’t really a plot

Kourtney

I found myself attracted to this novel when I saw that it was told in epistolary form - all in emails, memos (MEMOS?) letters, and legal decrees. I am a sucker for those types of novels so I thought I would give this one a shot, as I never read one with a legal bent before. 

I know that the old saying is to write what you know, but in this case the author may want to have toned down what she knows so the layperson can read it too. I found myself skipping a lot of legal jargon and sections where she could show off her knowledge of classic literature just to get to the story. This book would have been much better had the editor done their job and cut down a lot of the unnecessary lines throughout the novel. Once I skipped all that, then I was able to get to the story of the divorce between Mia and Daniel and the effects on their child, Jane. The storyline of Sophie and her dealing with her parent's divorce and her love life bored me to tears, and I found myself skipping over those sections as well. I could care less how Sophie felt and given that she was 29/30 years old, I found myself thinking that she should be more mature when dealing with her clients and her boss. Instead she was whiny, inappropriate and dull. And all the dealings with her parents? Just remove it. The real meat and potatoes of the story was the divorce storyline. Just keep it to that and stop using the rest as filler.

The Divorce Papers A Novel

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