No Fault: A Memoir of Romance and Divorce

An intimate and candid account of one of the most romantic and revolutionary of relationships, divorce—from a brilliant, award-winning young writer

When Haley Mlotek was ten years old, she told her mother to leave her father. Divorce was all around her. Her mother ran a mediation and marriage counseling practice out of Mlotek’s childhood home, and she spent her preteen years answering the phones and typing out parenting plans for couples in the process of leaving each other. She grew up with the sense that divorce was an outcome to both resist and desire, an ordeal that promised something better on the other side of something bad. But when she herself went on to marry—and then divorce—the man she had been with for twelve years, suddenly, she had to reconsider everything she thought she understood about divorce.

Deftly combining her personal story with wry, searching social and literary exploration, No Fault is a brilliant account of 21st century divorce—its remarkably common and yet seemingly singular impact, what it reveals about our society and our desires for family, love, and friendship. Mlotek asks profound questions about what divorce should be, who it is for, and why the institution of marriage maintains its power, all while charting a poignant and cathartic journey away from her own marriage and towards an unknown future.

Brilliant, funny, and unflinchingly honesty, No Fault is a kaleidoscopic look at marriage, secrets, ambitions, and what it truly means to love and live with uncertainty, betrayal, and hope.