Book Review: Ex-Wife, a novel by Ursula Parrott (1929)

Originally published in 1929, this is the cover for the 2023 paperback reprinting of Ex-Wife, by Ursula Parrott. 

After I read Marsha Gordon’s excellent 2023 biography Becoming the Ex-Wife: The Unconventional Life & Forgotten Writings of Ursula Parrott, I knew I had to read Parrott’s first novel, Ex-Wife. Published in 1929, Ex-Wife became a sensation, selling over 100,000 copies and launching Parrott’s career. Ex-Wife was republished in 2023 by McNally Editions. Unfortunately, it’s the only one of Parrott’s books that is currently in print. But the fact that Ex-Wife is finding a new audience is a positive one.  

Even though it’s now 95 years old, Ex-Wife is still a powerful book that asks deep questions about marriage and women’s roles in society. Parrott’s writing feels modern and vibrant, and she creates interesting characters to tell the story of Patricia and Peter, and the breakdown of their marriage.  

Ex-Wife was quite a shocking book in its day, and I’ll admit that I was shocked when just a few pages in Patricia and her roommate Lucia have a frank conversation about men. Lucia says, “We are awfully popular, and we know endless men, and we go everywhere.” Patricia responds, “They all want to sleep with us. So soon as they get here for dinner they begin arranging to stay for breakfast.” (p.8) That exchange felt very modern for a 1929 novel.  

Parrott’s nimble prose style keeps the reader swiftly turning the pages of Ex-Wife. There are harrowing moments, but the first-person narration doesn’t dwell on self-pity. Patricia is torn between the Victorian Age and modernity. The dilemmas she faces in Ex-Wife are those of women of every era: the balancing act of marriage, divorce, dating, love, family, children, career, friends. The result is a novel that still feels fresh and vibrant today.  

There’s a marvelous chapter in Ex-Wife that uses George Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue” as a motif. The sheet music from excerpts of “Rhapsody” is reprinted in the text of the novel, creating a marvelous fusion between music and writing. Perfect for “the Jazz Age.” 

Speaking of “the Jazz Age,” there’s even a reference in Ex-Wife to F. Scott Fitzgerald, who famously coined the term “the Jazz Age.” Patricia tells Lucia “Myself, I’ve progressed, in taste, from Scott Fitzgerald to Ernest Hemingway.” Lucia asks, “How much progress is that?” Patricia replies, “A damn long distance on the road to bigger and broader vocabularies.” (p.68-9) As a Fitzgerald fan, I’m a bit annoyed at this slight against Scott’s writing, but I can understand Patricia’s comment—certainly the subject matter of Fitzgerald and Hemingway was quite different.  

There are many marvelous lines in Ex-Wife, and one of my favorites was Lucia’s description of an older man who occasionally takes her out to dinner: “There’s a man who never got lost among the nuances, for he wouldn’t know a nuance if he saw it.” (p.96) Lucia has another great zinger: “Great Lovers...they remind me of the man who wanted to be a musician and so took one lesson on each instrument in the orchestra...he couldn’t play a tune on any of them in the end, Pat.” (p.134) 

I’d recommend Ex-Wife to anyone interested in a superb novel from the 1920’s that deserves a wider audience today.  

Book Review: Becoming the Ex-Wife: The Unconventional Life & Forgotten Writings of Ursula Parrott, by Marsha Gordon (2023)

The cover of Becoming the Ex-Wife: the Unconventional Life & Forgotten Writings of Ursula Parrott, by Marsha Gordon, 2023. That's such a cool photo of Ursula on the cover.

Professor and author Marsha Gordon

I recently had the good fortune to speak at the “Zelda Days” festival in Asheville, North Carolina. One of the other speakers that weekend was Marsha Gordon, a professor of film studies at North Carolina State University. Gordon is the author of the 2023 biography Becoming the Ex-Wife: the Unconventional Life & Forgotten Writings of Ursula Parrott. I had never heard of Ursula Parrott before, even though she was a highly successful Jazz Age author. My first thought was “Okay, Ursula Parrott is the coolest name I’ve ever heard.” Hearing Gordon lecture about Parrott’s life and writings just whetted my appetite to read her book. Now that I’ve finished reading Becoming the Ex-Wife, I can report to you that Ursula Parrott more than lived up to the coolness of her name. 

Ursula Parrott was born Katherine Ursula Towle in 1899, in Boston. She married Lindesay Mark Parrott in 1922, and when she began publishing, her publisher suggested she should use the name Ursula Parrott. Parrott’s first novel was Ex-Wife, which quickly became a sensation after it was published in 1929. Ex-Wife launched Parrott on a successful career writing novels, short stories, and working on screenplays in Hollywood. Parrott was in great demand as an author, earning huge sums for her work. But as quickly as the money came in, it went out. Like other Jazz Age authors (paging F. Scott Fitzgerald!) Parrott was unable to live within her means, and she was constantly in debt.  

Parrott’s life and career had several parallels with that of F. Scott Fitzgerald. As a Fitzgerald fan, I’m always on the lookout for Fitzgerald parallels. There’s no direct evidence that Parrott and Fitzgerald ever met, but he spent several months in 1938 working on a screenplay of her short story “Infidelity.” The plan was that “Infidelity” would be a vehicle for Joan Crawford at MGM, but there was no way a story about infidelity was going to make it past the censors in 1938. The fact that “Infidelity” was not produced was a disappointment for Fitzgerald. If Parrott and Fitzgerald ever met, they would have had a lot to talk about, and I can imagine them becoming friends and trading witty banter.  

Some of the parallels between Parrott and Fitzgerald: they were both raised Catholic, they both had two sisters who died in infancy, they were both obsessed with car crashes, and they both struggled with their grades in college, being smart people who didn’t “apply themselves” in school. Another connection was that Ursula’s first husband, Lindesay Parrott, was a Princeton alum. Although he and Fitzgerald didn’t overlap at Princeton, they probably had friends in common, and Lindesay’s father was a professor in the English department at Princeton.  

Parrott’s novels and short stories dealt with women entering the workforce, getting married, getting divorced, having affairs, being a single parent, and balancing work and life. She is a writer whose themes are still deeply relevant to American society today, nearly 100 years later. Unfortunately, nearly all of Parrott’s novels have long been out of print. Thankfully, Ex-Wife was published in a new edition in 2023, and it’s now next on my reading list. Gordon’s synopses of Parrott’s work will have you wanting to read more of Parrott’s work. 

Parrott was married and divorced four times, and she raised her son Marc largely with the help of her sister Lucy. Parrott’s private life was sometimes messy, and the chapter that discusses her four abortions is harrowing, offering a grim reminder of the aftermath of the fabulous Jazz Age parties.  

Throughout the book, Gordon is sympathetic to Parrott’s difficulties, as she struggled to meet her writing deadlines and stay afloat financially. Unfortunately, the last chapter of Parrott’s life was a tragic one, as she published nothing during the final 10 years of her life, and she died penniless in a New York hospital in 1957.  

Gordon’s excellent work at chronicling Parrott’s colorful life and writings will hopefully lead to a deeper appreciation of Parrott’s work, and a fuller understanding of how she fit into the writers of her era.