Custom of the Country

Divorced in America, by Joseph Epstein. New York: E. P. Dutton. 318 pp.

Divorce, middle-class American style in particular, is endlessly discussed and little understood. The divorce rate continues to rise (the remarriage rate as well); the statistics no longer surprise, let alone shock. Institutionalized divorce has reached the point where “getting divorced” seems to carry the same weight as “getting married”; only seems to, however.

For all the rhetoric on the death of the nuclear family, for all that a clean divorce may be preferable to a miserable marriage, for all the contemporary emphasis on one’s personal right to opt out as freely as one enters in, some kind of family structure ...