
In “But You Seemed So Happy: A Marriage in Pieces and Bits,” writer Kimberly Harrington explores the voluntary dissolution of her marriage with dark humor and brutal honesty. On the balance, though, the book tends more toward the latter, making for an uneven, unhappy read.
As Harrington admits in the introduction, this book about her divorce didn’t have a great inciting incident. There wasn’t infidelity or scandal; thankfully, there’s no abuse or deep betrayal. Instead, the slow fadeout of her marriage falls into the classic category of “irreconcilable differences,” and she spends these pages trying to examine just how they got to that point.
The memoir walks us through the romance-adjacent portions of Harrington’s life: her parents’ divorce, her high school longing, a move to Portland, meeting her husband, getting married, moving into a dilapidated farmhouse and having kids. From there, it becomes a slow, steady fizzle, a marriage drained of its love like a soda going flat.
As a life path, it feels common enough. And while the author is adept at expressing her frustration–with her marriage, with her husband, with the patriarchy–it doesn’t seem like she fully lands the larger point she’s trying to make. On the whole, Harrington is skeptical about marriage. She argues, fairly, that there shouldn’t be anything shameful or embarrassing about a several-decade relationship coming to an end. She even has a chapter, “Things People Say When You Get Divorced That They Really Should Say When You Get Engaged.” But despite her best efforts to avoid off coming off as “the divorce witch,” her tone feels more personally aggrieved than anything. She sounds bitter.
Part of the issue is that we’re getting a one-sided account of the relationship. Her husband is only present in her telling; he has his own perspective on all of this, one we only get glimpses of when he refers to her as “high strung” in a text she snoops on or takes issue with Harrington entering a Tinder flirtation during their separation without telling him. On the whole, though, he comes off as a good guy, decent and honest. Harrington gives him full credit for these positive traits, but the reader spends a lot of the book wondering where the problem is exactly.
Part of the challenge is that Harrington poses as a no-holds-barred truthteller, but she doesn’t seem to put herself under the same microscope that she applies to her husband and society. As she admits at one point, a point of contention for her husband is that she has “different rules” for herself. The book supports that. Harrington often comes off as aggressive and self-absorbed, too caught up in what others think. It seems she felt the need to write a book-length memoir about why she was justified in getting a divorce instead of just getting one. (Spoiler: at the end, the couple is separated but still married and living in the same house.)
Harrington certainly raises some thoughtful points, about her marriage and everyones’, and the bitter humor can be entertaining. But she’s better at expressing her frustration than diagnosing what’s going on. When she looks back at the past, her tone can be nostalgic and sweet, but when she writes about wanting to put a fist through a wall because of her husband’s chewing, it just feels rant-y.
On the deepest level, “But You Seemed So Happy” feels like a lament about how she was supposed to be a special, cynical, smart young thing and instead has to go through the same dumb aging and disappointments and making a living that everyone else does. Unfortunately (and granted, this is a dude saying this), it happens to the best of us.
Quotes
“I thought I didn’t care what he did and I would be happy for him when he moved on, because I was now an Evolved Person. Instead, I was shocked at how flashy and visceral my jealousy was. He could move on after I moved on! I’d be happy for him after I was happy with myself first!”