The Year of the End: A Memoir of Marriage, Truth and Fiction

Decades following its end, former BBC presenter Theroux debuts with a moving reflection on the dissolution of her marriage with American travel writer and novelist Paul Theroux. Beginning in January 1990, after the couple agreed to spend time apart, she kept a diary, the contents of which serve as the emotional thrust of her story. “I was trying to write truth, not fiction,” she exclaims, arguing that her ex-husband took liberties when depicting their relationship in his autobiographical writing. When they met in 1967, “All he wanted... was a pretty girl who would applaud him and love him.” Anne describes how through pregnancy and marriage Paul’s career subsumed hers, as they moved to Singapore, then Dorset, and finally London. He dismissed his numerous infidelities as unimportant and yet Anne’s own affair in 1973 became, in Paul’s eyes, the “root” of their marriage’s end: “he never got over the pain, jealousy and humiliation.” The turmoil reached its apex when Anne found out Paul had spent their year apart living with another woman. In an interview long after their divorce, Paul declared “writers... need a specific kind of woman—protective and self-sacrificing.” This searing reckoning makes it clear that Anne had bigger dreams. The result yields a smart and dishy book that’s hard to put down. (Oct.)