Post-Divorce Literary Fiction Arrives
Lily Meyer's "The End of Romance" hit shelves in hardcover, offering a buoyant take on post-divorce life and the search for happiness outside romantic entanglement. The contemporary novel focuses on finding fulfillment beyond traditional relationship structures.
Author Lily Meyer is an established translator, critic, and novelist. "The End of Romance" is her second novel, following 2024's "Short War." Meyer also serves as a staff writer for The Atlantic and holds a Ph.D. in Creative Writing from the University of Cincinnati. The novel's protagonist, Sylvie Broder, is the granddaughter of Holocaust survivors who escapes an emotionally abusive marriage. She enrolls in a philosophy Ph.D. program and formulates a theory that happiness for straight women can only be achieved by completely eradicating public-facing romance. Sylvie's anti-romance philosophy is put to the test when she becomes involved with two men: Robbie, who is warm and gentle, and Abie, who is passionate and challenging. This central conflict creates what one reviewer called a "squashed love polygon" rather than a simple love triangle, complicated by the lingering presence of her menacing, undivorced husband. The book is part of a growing subgenre of literary fiction exploring the aftermath of divorce. This trend includes recent works like Miranda July's "All Fours" and Sarah Manguso's "Liars," which move beyond the breakup to focus on the complexities of rebuilding a life. The rise in these narratives has been linked to the generation of writers who came of age after no-fault divorce became legal in all 50 states.
