Non-essential reading list for divorce

Four reads for separation.

Everyone will tell you that separation is one of life's biggest changes. They're right. You take a look at yourself and either descend into classic midlife crisis or you read books that inspire hope and empathy.

So here's what helped me to reflect on life's biggest change and maybe these books can help you. The books here are fiction and won't help you with the practicalities but they will help you with understanding how people (including yourself) feel.

The List of Things That Will Not Change by Rebecca Stead

This middle grade book was recommended by my daughter at the time. It tugs at all the right heart strings, charting the separation of
Bea's parents and the new lives they discover. The title gives the best single parenting advice: let your kids know some things will remain the same. 

For Bea, it is a list in her green notebook which starts with "Mom and Dad will always love Bea, and each other." And the plot pushes up against that constant with subtly described parental squabbles occurring just off the page as Bea's dad re-marries. I read it with my daughter and it continues to give us things to talk about.

There's a US edition and one from Text Publishing, which I reckon has a sweeter cover.

The Riders by Tim Winton

I read Winton's novel when I was younger and remember having romantic ideas about Scully, the protagonist whose wife disappears, leaving him with his daughter in Ireland. His chase across Europe to work out why she left seemed like a great quest for love and not giving up on hope. Now it reads as a narcissistic spiral.

What I missed reading this was how his brilliant kid Billie is neglected in Scully's chase to understand why his wife has left him. Everyone will tell you that your priorities will change with parenting and single parenting is another change. Scully's once-romantic quest forgets the more important love of a parent and drags out the recognition that his relationship is over but there is a more important relationship he needs to pay attention to. 

In the conclusion, it doesn't matter who his wife is with in a Dutch houseboat. Scully needed to make a home for his downsized family. And how quickly he can make that adjustment from vaunted ex to father is better for everyone. This is one of those books that gives you different lessons depending where you are .

"I Live on your visits" by Dorothy Parker

Parker just excels at this kind of piece, at once true, human and snide. A child of separation feels obligated to visit his mother, an isolated woman still bearing the scars of the ended relationship. 

It feels like a checklist of what not to do: slagging off your ex (even if it is funny), making your kid feel guilty for the time they're not with you and manipulating them to feel sorry for you. You get the mother's melodramatic manipulation right from the title and she insists on baby-talking to a clearly uncomfortable young man. But this is Porter so it is played with a dark humour. 

This version is read by Andrew Sean Greer, giving it extra potency of feeling like it is read by a young man who has survived his parents divorce. It makes you appreciate the impact your parenting might have on your kid. Sometimes hilariously, sometime disastrously.

"Debarking" by Lorrie Moore

Moore deserves a bigger audience for her work's grasp of humanity. Her most recent I am Homeless if this is not my Home is that kind piercing novel that takes on death and lost love that you rave to others about knowing they will think you are a lunatic. But her short stories are even better.

'Debarking' comes from her collection Bark follows Ira, a 6-month divorced man who thinks he's ready for a new relationship with Zora. But single mother Zora doesn't really have room for him as she's busy playing footsy with her son, wrestling with him and it becomes a worrying threesome - perhaps not literally but Ira is never quite sure. 

His interactions with his own daughter are becoming distant and coded as she moves into adolescence. A sample of this comes when Ira hears about his ex's new partner from his daughter: "Bummer," Ira said, his new word for "I must remain as neutral as possible" and "Your mother is a whore." 

The title comes from Ira being told by his ex that he doesn't talk, he barks. So this is a story of the long slow process of 'debarking', untangling yourself from your ex and working out what you want as opposed to what you're expected to do. 

You can get the whole book of Moore short stories (and you definitely won't be disappointed by other stories like Paper Losses also packing a punch) or just get this story via The New Yorker. 

None of these books are practical self-help books and some of those are really helpful (including resources at Relationships Australia). This list is not meant to replace those or going to see a mental health expert, but books can help. Maybe you see yourself, or someone you should not be, but at their best they show you someone else's perspective. And that's worth a lot right now.