EVERY OTHER WEEKEND
by Margaret Klaw
Klaw’s debut novel follows a community through one couple’s divorce.
Set in the idyllic Greenwood community of Philadelphia, this story follows Lisa and Jake Naudain and their children, Elizabeth and Charlotte, as they navigate a major change in their lives. Jake is bewildered when, after a dinner party, his wife, Lisa, proposes divorce. She’s felt the relationship has been flawed for some time, as Jake has lied about financial matters and his work in IT and as a rock band member doesn’t follow a goal-oriented career trajectory. When they divorce, Jake becomes involved with Samara, a 20-something woman who wants a polyamorous relationship. When young Charlie gets scared one night, she winds up in the same bed with her father and his newfound girlfriend, which leads to additional parental-custody proceedings. Klaw presents the story in a series of vignettes from the close third-person perspectives of Lisa, Jake, Charlie, Elizabeth, and the presiding judge as well as Jake’s attorney, Ellen Ackerman, (whose cases usually involved “that certain type of contemporary twenty-first-century uncoupling in which both parties were highly motivated to approach divorce collaboratively”) and Ellen’s daughter Marni, all of whom reside in Greenwood. The author, a family lawyer herself and author of Keeping It Civil (2013)—a nonfiction book about modern-day people navigating divorces—writes with authority about the legal system and how the end of marriage not only affects the members of a nuclear family, but also the people around them. Although this book is an engaging read and easy to follow, it’s more about the divorce case than it is about individual character development. It also solely follows wealthy characters, so it lacks insight into how people of other socioeconomic statuses in Greenwood might navigate similar circumstances. However, it effectively focuses a clear lens on the legal aspects of dissolving a marriage and negotiating child custody.
An informative, if slightly uneven, narrative about the dissolution of a marriage.