Say When – Elizabeth Berg

Griffin knew that Ellen was seeing something, knew as he watched her prepare herself more elaborately for her auto mechanics course every week, but it still comes as an enormous shock when his wife tells him she wants a divorce. Okay, their marriage had problems, but what marriage doesn’t, and he was mostly happy. If it were just him affected maybe things would be different, but he’s not going to ignore the effect of this on their daughter, and so Griffin decides he won’t make things easy for Ellen – if she wants out of the marriage, she’ll have to be the one to move out of the family home, and he’s not going to cede custody.
As the months pass, Griffin refects on the relationship he has with Ellen, and with their daughter Zoe – on the history of their marriage and the parts they both played:

Griffin had his own relationship with [their parakeet] that was in no way inferior to the one Ellen had. It was just different. Did she ever think of that, that things experienced in ways different from hers were equally valuable?
That the way he chose to love her was, in fact, loving her, that the face of love depended on the person giving it? Couldn’t she see that the difficulty came not from her Griffin withholding but hr unwillingness to receive? But he would not confront her with this. Even a he tried to convince himself that it was true, he was aware of his own self-deception. He admitted, now, if only to himself, his catalogue of intentional slights, his moments of soft cruelty, his awareness of complicity in creating a relationship that could not work.

This is a story about people, love, self-awareness and growth. Berg articulates the divide between men and women, as well as the things that unite them, and despite the topic the novel is gentle and embracing. It’s also exceptionally well written and satisfying. - Alex