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Book Summary and Reviews of No Fault by Haley Mlotek

No Fault by Haley Mlotek

No Fault

A Memoir of Romance and Divorce

by Haley Mlotek

  • Critics' Consensus (9):
  • Publishes:
  • Feb 18, 2025, 304 pages
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About this book

Book Summary

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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Reviews

Media Reviews

"Mlotek debuts with a frank combination of personal and social history that examines both her own divorce and shifting attitudes about the practice...[A] shrewd testament to personal agency and self-definition...This raw and reflective account stands out in the crowded field of divorce memoirs." —Publishers Weekly

"An uncertain and stifled stab at understanding the changing significance of marriage and divorce." —Kirkus Reviews

"Mlotek writes with wry and poignant fluidity, her wit almost offhanded, her avidity for understanding, candor, and provocative syllogisms magnetic. The result is an intimate, astute, and captivating inquiry into the conventions and mysteries of marriage and divorce." —Booklist

"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 remarkable work of nonfiction: sensitive, deftly researched, tender, wise. Mlotek's writing is beautifully alive to the world, alive to the histories of marriage and divorce, alive to the hardest thing to pin down on the page: the truths of who we are and have been, in all their shimmering, quantum states." —Sarah Thankam Mathews, author of National Book Award finalist All This Could Be Different

"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

This information about No Fault was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.

Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.

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Author Information

Haley Mlotek

Haley Mlotek is a writer, editor, and organizer. Her work has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, The Nation, Bookforum, The Paris Review, The Columbia Journalism Review, Vogue, ELLE, Harper's Bazaar, Hazlitt, and n+1, among others. She is a founding member of the Freelance Solidarity Project in the National Writers Union, teaches in the English and Journalism departments at Concordia University, and is the editorial lead at Feeld. Previously, Haley was the deputy editor of SSENSE, the style editor of MTV News, the editor of The Hairpin, and the publisher of WORN Fashion Journal.

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