Marina Scholtz . Ex-Wife , Ursula Parrott, Faber Editions, 2024, 252 pages, £9.99 .
. This might be the reissued book of the summer, but its author’s Wikipedia page is one for the ages. Like every serious party girl Ursula Parrott’s ‘Personal Life’ section is long, varied and includes multiple arrests.
She was married four times, had innumerable affairs and a secret child. She was an alcoholic given to profligate spending. Her life and work became so synonymous with a total lack of morality that the US Army requested that no books by Parrott be donated to the troops in 1939.
Ex-Wife was initially published anonymously in 1929. It quickly topped bestseller lists alongside Hemingway’s Farewell to Arms and Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front. It is a far more entertaining read than either, and Faber have repackaged it as holiday reading for the thinking woman.
Its frank discussion of sexual mores and other excesses in prohibition era New York meant that its publication caused widespread scandal and moral outrage. When a gossip column finally revealed Ursula Parrott as the author, she never managed, nor tried to, dodge the ensuing notoriety. Much was made of whether this was a confession or a novel – it was almost a century before it became boring to ask female novelists that question.
Ex-Wife tells the story of Patricia, a reluctant twenty-four year old divorcée, as she morphs from a diligent housewife into a promiscuous flapper. Parrott’s life certainly.