No Fault: A Memoir of Romance and Divorce
An intimate and candid account of one of the most romantic and revolutionary of relationships: divorce
Divorce was everything for Haley Mlotek. As a child, she listened to her twice-divorced grandmother tell stories about her “husbands.” As a pre-teen, she answered the phones for her mother’s mediation and marriage counseling practice and typed out the paperwork for couples in the process of leaving each other. She grew up with the sense that divorce was an outcome to both resist and desire, an ordeal that promised something better on the other side of something bad. But when she herself went on to marry—and then divorce—the man she had been with for twelve years, suddenly, she had to reconsider her generation’s inherited understanding of the institution.
Deftly combining her personal story with wry, searching social and literary exploration, No Fault is a deeply felt and radiant account of 21st century divorce—the remarkably common and seemingly singular experience, and what it reveals about our society and our desires for family, love, and friendship. Mlotek asks profound questions about what divorce should be, who it is for, and why the institution of marriage maintains its power, all while charting a poignant and cathartic journey away from her own marriage towards an unknown future.
Brilliant, funny, and unflinchingly honest, No Fault is a kaleidoscopic look at marriage, secrets, ambitions, and what it means to love and live with uncertainty, betrayal, and hope.
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Advance Praise for No Fault:
“Haley Mlotek’s No Fault is a book about life escaping the story built to contain it. A history of heterosexual love, marriage, and divorce that’s suspicious of clean answers, a winsome and poignant recounting of her own romantic formation and deformation, No Fault is a cool and bracing corrective against those many over-certain stories of marriage’s dissolution that still dominate the form. Mlotek, as always, is a master of elegant destabilization; her sentences are enigmatic, opalescent, so precise as to feel like long-lost aphorisms. We’re lucky to have her on this subject—a writer who can work in the gap between the known and the unknown, the intimate and the public, the way our lives are always forged in material context and the unreachable particularities of the human heart.”
—Jia Tolentino, New York Times bestselling author of Trick Mirror
“Sharp, smart, and searingly personal, No Fault is an ideal hybrid of rigorous reporting, social commentary, and personal reflection on the nature of love and divorce. Mlotek writes like a dream, and draws us close as she ponders what makes a marriage endure or crumble. You’ll want to join her on this journey.”
—Susan Orlean, New York Times bestselling author of The Library Book
“No Fault is a boldly intimate and political work that tenderly reveals the links between intimacy and politics; societal forces and emotional chaos. Mlotek is at home in contradiction, confidently traversing systemic analysis alongside the nuances of individual experience. From the rubble of old stories and structures, Mlotek has unearthed insights about love and endings that will stay with me for a long time.”
—Tavi Gevinson, actor and writer
“Haley Mlotek’s No Fault stuns with its emotional intensity, intelligence, and frankness. Her clarity and psychological sophistication produce acute insights. They come from experience, analyzing media, and researching divorce laws and their effects on society. In No Fault, a surprising, genre-bending work, Mlotek discusses the aftermath of her own divorce, with its indefinable, unexpected feelings and anguish. ‘To be wanted is one thing, to be left is another,’ she says. No Fault is unrelenting in its mission to expose the complexity of divorce. Not an absolute end, bringing freedom and relief, fault or no fault, Mlotek tells us. It can be hell, even if easier to get. No Fault is a formidable, important work.”
—Lynne Tillman, author of Mothercare
“Sentence for sentence, Haley’s personal and closely examined chronicle of marriage and divorce, ‘forever’ and ‘for now,’ is keenly observed and real fun.”
—Durga Chew-Bose, author of Too Much and Not the Mood
“I’m haunted by the sophistication of Haley Mlotek’s insights and the tenderness with which they are delivered. No Fault is devastating because it is as full of pain as it is love. There is no other book on divorce or marriage—or romance—like this one.”
—Charlotte Shane, author of An Honest Woman
“Singular, dazzling and wry, No Fault weaves the personal and political in an elegant exploration of divorce’s cultural position, and of what it means to take that step yourself—moving onto ground both historically well-trodden, and unimaginably alien. There is such clarity and tenderness set out in the pristine sentences of this book.”
—Sophie Mackintosh, author of The Water Cure
