Ex-Wife by Ursula Parrott review – Bridget Jones in the jazz age

Reissued after a century, this lively, funny and harrowing debut follows a divorcee torn between sexual liberation and the compromised ‘safety’ of marriage in the 1920s

“This is the end. Why don’t I cry or something?” thinks the heroine of this novel. It’s the beginning of the book but the end of her marriage, and her feelings are mixed. “I hoped I looked devastated; I hoped I looked lovely” – though she is sitting alone, with no one to see.

Ex-Wife, Ursula Parrott’s first novel, was published in the US in 1929, but never in Britain until now. The book was put out anonymously, not for fear of scandal but as a marketing gimmick – though it’s easy to see that it could have been controversial, with its frank depictions of abortion and casual sex. (“Chastity, really, went out when birth control came in,” says one character.) Continue reading...


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