
This American Ex-Wife
How I Ended My Marriage and Started My Life
Failed to add items
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
$0.99/mo for the first 3 months

Buy for $15.75
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
-
Narrated by:
-
Lyz Lenz
-
By:
-
Lyz Lenz
About this listen
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A deeply validating manifesto on the gender politics of marriage (bad) and divorce (actually pretty good!) in America today, and an argument that the former needs a reboot—from journalist and proud divorcée Lyz Lenz
“This American Ex-Wife is a bomb, a bouquet (but not a wedding bouquet), a memoir, a manifesto, and a total joy to read.”—Rebecca Solnit, author of Men Explain Things to Me
AN ELECTRIC LIT BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR
Studies show that nearly 70 percent of divorces are initiated by women—women who are tired, fed up, exhausted, and unhappy. We’ve all seen how the media portrays divorcées: sad, lonely, drowning their sorrows in a bottle of wine. Lyz Lenz is one such woman whose life fell apart after she reached a breaking point in her twelve-year marriage. But she refused to take part in that tired narrative and decided to flip the script on divorce.
In this exuberant and unapologetic book, Lenz makes an argument for the advantages of getting divorced, framing it as a practical and effective solution for women to take back the power they are owed. Weaving reportage with sociological research and literature with popular culture along with personal stories of coming together and breaking up, Lenz creates a kaleidoscopic and poignant portrait of American marriage today. She argues that the mechanisms of American power, justice, love, and gender equality remain deeply flawed, and that marriage, like any other cultural institution, is due for a reckoning. A raucous argument for acceptance, solidarity, and collective female refusal, This American Ex-Wife takes listeners on a riveting ride—while pointing us all toward a life that is a little more free.
©2024 Lyz Lenz (P)2024 Random House AudioListeners also enjoyed...
-
Splinters
- Another Kind of Love Story
- By: Leslie Jamison
- Narrated by: Leslie Jamison
- Length: 8 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Leslie Jamison has become one of our most beloved contemporary voices, a scribe of the real, the true, the complex. But while Jamison has never shied away from challenging material—scouring her own psyche and digging into our most unanswerable questions across four books—Splinters enters a new realm. In her first memoir, Jamison turns her unrivaled powers of perception on some of the most intimate relationships of her life: her consuming love for her young daughter, a ruptured marriage once swollen with hope, and the shaping legacy of her own parents’ complicated bond.
-
-
Felt too self indulgent - even for a memoir
- By Kristin H on 09-27-24
By: Leslie Jamison
-
You Could Make This Place Beautiful
- A Memoir
- By: Maggie Smith
- Narrated by: Maggie Smith
- Length: 7 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In her memoir You Could Make This Place Beautiful, poet Maggie Smith explores the disintegration of her marriage and her renewed commitment to herself in lyrical vignettes that shine, hard and clear as jewels. The book begins with one woman’s personal, particular heartbreak, but its circles widen into a reckoning with contemporary womanhood, traditional gender roles, and the power dynamics that persist even in many progressive homes.
-
-
Beautiful, relatable, profound
- By Betty Blue on 04-16-23
By: Maggie Smith
-
Liars
- A Novel
- By: Sarah Manguso
- Narrated by: Rebecca Lowman
- Length: 6 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When Jane, an aspiring writer, meets filmmaker John Bridges, they both want the same things: to be in love, to live a successful, creative life, and to be happy. When they marry, Jane believes she has found everything she was looking for, including—a few years later—all the attendant joys and labors of motherhood. But it’s not long until Jane finds herself subsumed by John’s ambitions, whims, and ego; in short, she becomes a wife.
-
-
Beautiful
- By Heather Demeter on 08-05-24
By: Sarah Manguso
-
Heartburn
- By: Nora Ephron
- Narrated by: Meryl Streep
- Length: 5 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Is it possible to write a sidesplitting novel about the breakup of the perfect marriage? If the writer is Nora Ephron, the answer is a resounding yes. For in this inspired confection of adultery, revenge, group therapy, and pot roast, the creator of Sleepless in Seattle reminds us that comedy depends on anguish as surely as a proper gravy depends on flour and butter.
-
-
Be the Heroine , Not the Victim
- By Cynthia on 07-12-13
By: Nora Ephron
-
Careless People
- A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism
- By: Sarah Wynn-Williams
- Narrated by: Sarah Wynn-Williams
- Length: 13 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From trips on private jets and encounters with world leaders to shocking accounts of misogyny and double standards behind the scenes, this searing memoir exposes both the personal and the political fallout when unfettered power and a rotten company culture take hold. In a gripping and often absurd narrative where a few people carelessly hold the world in their hands, this eye-opening memoir reveals what really goes on among the global elite.
-
-
Only a few hours in
- By Cody Konior on 03-24-25
-
Ambition Monster
- A Memoir
- By: Jennifer Romolini
- Narrated by: Jennifer Romolini
- Length: 9 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
After years of relentlessly racing up the professional ladder, Jennifer Romolini reached the kind of success many crave: a high-profile, C-suite dream job, a book well-received enough that reporters wanted to know the secrets to her success, and a gig traveling around the country giving speeches on “making it.” She had a handsome and clever husband, a precocious child. But beneath this polished surface was a powder keg of unresolved trauma and chronic overwork. It was all about to blow.
-
-
Love love love
- By James on 06-07-24
-
Splinters
- Another Kind of Love Story
- By: Leslie Jamison
- Narrated by: Leslie Jamison
- Length: 8 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Leslie Jamison has become one of our most beloved contemporary voices, a scribe of the real, the true, the complex. But while Jamison has never shied away from challenging material—scouring her own psyche and digging into our most unanswerable questions across four books—Splinters enters a new realm. In her first memoir, Jamison turns her unrivaled powers of perception on some of the most intimate relationships of her life: her consuming love for her young daughter, a ruptured marriage once swollen with hope, and the shaping legacy of her own parents’ complicated bond.
-
-
Felt too self indulgent - even for a memoir
- By Kristin H on 09-27-24
By: Leslie Jamison
-
You Could Make This Place Beautiful
- A Memoir
- By: Maggie Smith
- Narrated by: Maggie Smith
- Length: 7 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In her memoir You Could Make This Place Beautiful, poet Maggie Smith explores the disintegration of her marriage and her renewed commitment to herself in lyrical vignettes that shine, hard and clear as jewels. The book begins with one woman’s personal, particular heartbreak, but its circles widen into a reckoning with contemporary womanhood, traditional gender roles, and the power dynamics that persist even in many progressive homes.
-
-
Beautiful, relatable, profound
- By Betty Blue on 04-16-23
By: Maggie Smith
-
Liars
- A Novel
- By: Sarah Manguso
- Narrated by: Rebecca Lowman
- Length: 6 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When Jane, an aspiring writer, meets filmmaker John Bridges, they both want the same things: to be in love, to live a successful, creative life, and to be happy. When they marry, Jane believes she has found everything she was looking for, including—a few years later—all the attendant joys and labors of motherhood. But it’s not long until Jane finds herself subsumed by John’s ambitions, whims, and ego; in short, she becomes a wife.
-
-
Beautiful
- By Heather Demeter on 08-05-24
By: Sarah Manguso
-
Heartburn
- By: Nora Ephron
- Narrated by: Meryl Streep
- Length: 5 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Is it possible to write a sidesplitting novel about the breakup of the perfect marriage? If the writer is Nora Ephron, the answer is a resounding yes. For in this inspired confection of adultery, revenge, group therapy, and pot roast, the creator of Sleepless in Seattle reminds us that comedy depends on anguish as surely as a proper gravy depends on flour and butter.
-
-
Be the Heroine , Not the Victim
- By Cynthia on 07-12-13
By: Nora Ephron
-
Careless People
- A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism
- By: Sarah Wynn-Williams
- Narrated by: Sarah Wynn-Williams
- Length: 13 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From trips on private jets and encounters with world leaders to shocking accounts of misogyny and double standards behind the scenes, this searing memoir exposes both the personal and the political fallout when unfettered power and a rotten company culture take hold. In a gripping and often absurd narrative where a few people carelessly hold the world in their hands, this eye-opening memoir reveals what really goes on among the global elite.
-
-
Only a few hours in
- By Cody Konior on 03-24-25
-
Ambition Monster
- A Memoir
- By: Jennifer Romolini
- Narrated by: Jennifer Romolini
- Length: 9 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
After years of relentlessly racing up the professional ladder, Jennifer Romolini reached the kind of success many crave: a high-profile, C-suite dream job, a book well-received enough that reporters wanted to know the secrets to her success, and a gig traveling around the country giving speeches on “making it.” She had a handsome and clever husband, a precocious child. But beneath this polished surface was a powder keg of unresolved trauma and chronic overwork. It was all about to blow.
-
-
Love love love
- By James on 06-07-24
-
Consent
- A Memoir
- By: Jill Ciment
- Narrated by: Eileen Stevens
- Length: 4 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this close-up look at the ardent love affair between the author and her painting teacher, which began in the 1970s, when she was seventeen and he was forty-seven and married with two children, Ciment not only reflects on how their love ignited (who leaned in first for that kiss?) but interrogates her 1990s memoir on the subject, Half a Life. She asks herself if she told the whole truth when she wrote about their passion back then, and what truth looked like to her in the even longer-ago era of love-bead curtains when she fell in love.
-
-
Excellent writing; overworked main question
- By Eric A. Ruthford on 06-18-24
By: Jill Ciment
-
One Way Back
- A Memoir
- By: Christine Blasey Ford
- Narrated by: Christine Blasey Ford
- Length: 8 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
On September 27, 2018, Christine Blasey Ford testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee which was considering the nomination of Judge Brett Kavanaugh to the United States Supreme Court. She described an alleged sexual assault by the Supreme Court nominee that took place at a high school party in the 1980s. Her words and courage on that day provided some of the most credible and unforgettable testimony our country has ever witnessed. In One Way Back, Ford recounts the months she spent trying to get information into the right hands without exposing herself and her family to backlash.
-
-
Waste of my good money..
- By william Story on 01-30-25
-
No Fault
- A Memoir of Romance and Divorce
- By: Haley Mlotek
- Narrated by: Haley Mlotek
- Length: 7 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Divorce was everything for Haley Mlotek. As a child, she listened to her twice-divorced grandmother tell stories about her “husbands.” As a pre-teen, she answered the phones for her mother’s mediation and marriage counseling practice and typed out the paperwork 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. 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 her generation’s inherited understanding of the institution.
-
-
When we are divorced, it is still happening.
- By Anonymous User on 03-29-25
By: Haley Mlotek
-
Keep Moving
- Notes on Loss, Creativity, and Change
- By: Maggie Smith
- Narrated by: Maggie Smith
- Length: 2 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When Maggie Smith, the award-winning author of the viral poem "Good Bones", started writing inspirational daily Twitter posts in the wake of her divorce, they unexpectedly caught fire. In this deeply moving book of quotes and essays, Maggie writes about new beginnings as opportunities for transformation. Like kintsugi, the Japanese art of mending broken ceramics with gold, Keep Moving celebrates the beauty and strength on the other side of loss. This is a book for anyone who has gone through a difficult time and is wondering: What comes next?
-
-
This is not THAT Maggie Smith
- By Scribezilla on 10-16-20
By: Maggie Smith
-
Consent
- A Memoir
- By: Vanessa Springora, Natasha Lehrer - translator
- Narrated by: Anne-Marie Piazza
- Length: 4 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Consent is the story of one precocious young girl’s stolen adolescence. Devastating in its honesty, Vanessa’s painstakingly memoir lays bare the cultural attitudes and circumstances that made it possible for a 13-year-old girl to become involved with a 50-year-old man who happened to be a notable writer. As she recalls the events of her childhood and her seduction by one of her country’s most notable writers, Vanessa reflects on the ways in which this disturbing relationship changed and affected her as she grew older.
-
-
True fable deeply moving
- By EllieBK on 02-27-21
By: Vanessa Springora, and others
-
Rift
- A Memoir of Breaking Away from Christian Patriarchy
- By: Cait West
- Narrated by: Cait West
- Length: 8 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Raised in the Christian patriarchy movement, Cait West was homeschooled and could only wear clothes her father deemed modest. She was five years old the first time she was told her swimsuit was too revealing, to go change. There would be no college in her future, no career. She was a stay-at-home daughter and would move out only when her father allowed her to become a wife. She was trained to serve men, and her life would never be her own.
-
-
Compelling narrative and beautifully written
- By Maria Hauskins on 05-05-24
By: Cait West
-
I'm Mostly Here to Enjoy Myself
- One Woman's Pursuit of Pleasure in Paris
- By: Glynnis MacNicol
- Narrated by: Glynnis MacNicol
- Length: 7 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Come to Paris, August 2021, when the City of Lights was still empty of tourists and a thirst for long-overdue pleasure gripped those who wandered its streets. After New York City emptied out in March 2020, Glynnis MacNicol, aged forty-six, unmarried with no children, spent sixteen months alone in her tiny Manhattan apartment. The isolation was punishing. A year without touch. Women are warned of invisibility as they age, but this was an extreme loneliness no one can prepare you for. When the opportunity to sublet a friend’s apartment in Paris arose, MacNicol jumped on it.
-
-
Sentence structure; descriptions
- By Marlette Hoxmeier on 07-02-24
By: Glynnis MacNicol
-
Here After
- A Memoir
- By: Amy Lin
- Narrated by: Amy Lin
- Length: 3 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Amy Lin never expected to find a love like the one she shares with her husband, Kurtis, a gifted young architect who pulls her toward joy, adventure, and greater self-acceptance. On a sweltering August morning, only a few months shy of the newlyweds’ move to Vancouver, thirty-two-year-old Kurtis heads out to run a half-marathon with Amy’s family. It’s the last time she sees her husband alive.
-
-
5/5
- By Alyssa Beers on 04-12-24
By: Amy Lin
-
The Age of Magical Overthinking
- Notes on Modern Irrationality
- By: Amanda Montell
- Narrated by: Amanda Montell
- Length: 6 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Utilizing the linguistic insights of her “witty and brilliant” (Blyth Roberson, author of America the Beautiful?) first book Wordslut and the sociological explorations of her breakout hit Cultish, Amanda Montell now turns her erudite eye to the inner workings of the human mind and its biases in her most personal and electrifying work yet.
-
-
This was a memoir pretending to be something more scientific
- By Kay on 05-19-24
By: Amanda Montell
-
The Tell
- A Memoir
- By: Amy Griffin
- Narrated by: Amy Griffin
- Length: 7 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
For decades, Amy ran. Through the dirt roads of Amarillo, Texas, where she grew up; to the campus of the University of Virginia, as a student athlete; on the streets of New York, where she built her adult life; through marriage, motherhood, and a thriving career. To outsiders, it all looked, in many ways, perfect. But Amy was running from something—a secret she was keeping not only from her family and friends, but unconsciously from herself. “You’re here, but you’re not here,” her daughter said to her one night. “Where are you, Mom?”
-
-
Audiobook Redundant Wording
- By Sheryl's Review on 03-15-25
By: Amy Griffin
-
Reading the Waves
- A Memoir
- By: Lidia Yuknavitch
- Narrated by: Lidia Yuknavitch
- Length: 7 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Drawing on her background—her father's abuse, her complicated dynamic with her disabled mother, the death of her child, her sexual relationships with men and women—and her creative life as an author and teacher, Yuknavitch has come to understand that by using the power of literature and storytelling to reframe her memories, she can loosen the bonds that have enslaved her emotional growth. Armed with this insight, she allows herself to look with the eye of an artist at the wounds she suffered and come to understand the transformational power this has to restore her soul.
-
-
Lyrical prose that stirs and startles.
- By Noelle on 04-20-25
By: Lidia Yuknavitch
-
Aftermath
- On Marriage and Separation
- By: Rachel Cusk
- Narrated by: Antonia Beamish
- Length: 4 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the winter of 2009, Rachel Cusk’s marriage of 10 years came to an end. Candid and revelatory, Aftermath chronicles the perilous journey as the author redefines herself and creates a new version of family life for her daughters. She discovers previously unknown strengths and freedoms, but also finds herself suddenly vulnerable to outsiders, unwelcome advice, social displacement, and the absence of a clear authority. The pressure to reconstruct a “normal” life for her daughters competes with the sense that nothing feels normal at all.
-
-
Insightful
- By ncnickle on 01-03-25
By: Rachel Cusk
Critic reviews
“With This American Ex-Wife Lenz adds to her already impressive canon of cultural criticism. . . . Through a vivid mix of research, reporting, and personal anecdote, [she] reveals the power imbalances inherent to traditional heterosexual marriage, and calls for a radical act of refusal by women who have been too-long defined by their relationships to men.”—Literary Hub
“This American Ex-Wife is a bomb, a bouquet (but not a wedding bouquet), a memoir, a manifesto, and a total joy to read.” —Rebecca Solnit, author of Men Explain Things to Me
“A tour de force, instant classic memoir-meets-manifesto . . . Cishet love is a battlefield, and This American Ex-Wife is a long-awaited shield. This book will rightfully end and prevent certain types of marriages, by which I mean it will save lives.”—Alissa Nutting, author of Made for Love
People who viewed this also viewed...
-
Splinters
- Another Kind of Love Story
- By: Leslie Jamison
- Narrated by: Leslie Jamison
- Length: 8 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Leslie Jamison has become one of our most beloved contemporary voices, a scribe of the real, the true, the complex. But while Jamison has never shied away from challenging material—scouring her own psyche and digging into our most unanswerable questions across four books—Splinters enters a new realm. In her first memoir, Jamison turns her unrivaled powers of perception on some of the most intimate relationships of her life: her consuming love for her young daughter, a ruptured marriage once swollen with hope, and the shaping legacy of her own parents’ complicated bond.
-
-
Felt too self indulgent - even for a memoir
- By Kristin H on 09-27-24
By: Leslie Jamison
-
No Fault
- A Memoir of Romance and Divorce
- By: Haley Mlotek
- Narrated by: Haley Mlotek
- Length: 7 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Divorce was everything for Haley Mlotek. As a child, she listened to her twice-divorced grandmother tell stories about her “husbands.” As a pre-teen, she answered the phones for her mother’s mediation and marriage counseling practice and typed out the paperwork 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. 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 her generation’s inherited understanding of the institution.
-
-
When we are divorced, it is still happening.
- By Anonymous User on 03-29-25
By: Haley Mlotek
-
You Could Make This Place Beautiful
- A Memoir
- By: Maggie Smith
- Narrated by: Maggie Smith
- Length: 7 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In her memoir You Could Make This Place Beautiful, poet Maggie Smith explores the disintegration of her marriage and her renewed commitment to herself in lyrical vignettes that shine, hard and clear as jewels. The book begins with one woman’s personal, particular heartbreak, but its circles widen into a reckoning with contemporary womanhood, traditional gender roles, and the power dynamics that persist even in many progressive homes.
-
-
Beautiful, relatable, profound
- By Betty Blue on 04-16-23
By: Maggie Smith
-
God Land
- A Story of Faith, Loss, and Renewal in Middle America
- By: Lyz Lenz
- Narrated by: Lyz Lenz
- Length: 6 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From drugstores in Sydney, Iowa, to skeet shooting in rural Illinois, to the mega churches of Minneapolis, Lenz set out to discover the changing forces of faith and tradition in God's country. Part journalism, part memoir, God Land is a journey into the heart of a deeply divided America. Lenz visits places of worship across the heartland and speaks to the everyday people who often struggle to keep their churches afloat and to cope in a land of instability.
-
-
Lyz understands God Land.
- By Amazon Customer on 10-07-20
By: Lyz Lenz
-
I'm Mostly Here to Enjoy Myself
- One Woman's Pursuit of Pleasure in Paris
- By: Glynnis MacNicol
- Narrated by: Glynnis MacNicol
- Length: 7 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Come to Paris, August 2021, when the City of Lights was still empty of tourists and a thirst for long-overdue pleasure gripped those who wandered its streets. After New York City emptied out in March 2020, Glynnis MacNicol, aged forty-six, unmarried with no children, spent sixteen months alone in her tiny Manhattan apartment. The isolation was punishing. A year without touch. Women are warned of invisibility as they age, but this was an extreme loneliness no one can prepare you for. When the opportunity to sublet a friend’s apartment in Paris arose, MacNicol jumped on it.
-
-
Sentence structure; descriptions
- By Marlette Hoxmeier on 07-02-24
By: Glynnis MacNicol
-
No One Tells You This
- A Memoir
- By: Glynnis MacNicol
- Narrated by: Allyson Ryan
- Length: 9 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
If the story doesn’t end with marriage or a child, what then? This question plagued Glynnis MacNicol on the eve of her 40th birthday. Despite a successful career as a writer, and an exciting life in New York City, Glynnis was constantly reminded she had neither of the things the world expected of a woman her age: a partner or a baby. She knew she was supposed to feel bad about this. After all, single women and those without children are often seen as objects of pity. Glynnis refused to be cast into either of those roles and yet the question remained: What now?
-
-
Disappointing
- By Emily on 07-13-18
By: Glynnis MacNicol
-
Splinters
- Another Kind of Love Story
- By: Leslie Jamison
- Narrated by: Leslie Jamison
- Length: 8 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Leslie Jamison has become one of our most beloved contemporary voices, a scribe of the real, the true, the complex. But while Jamison has never shied away from challenging material—scouring her own psyche and digging into our most unanswerable questions across four books—Splinters enters a new realm. In her first memoir, Jamison turns her unrivaled powers of perception on some of the most intimate relationships of her life: her consuming love for her young daughter, a ruptured marriage once swollen with hope, and the shaping legacy of her own parents’ complicated bond.
-
-
Felt too self indulgent - even for a memoir
- By Kristin H on 09-27-24
By: Leslie Jamison
-
No Fault
- A Memoir of Romance and Divorce
- By: Haley Mlotek
- Narrated by: Haley Mlotek
- Length: 7 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Divorce was everything for Haley Mlotek. As a child, she listened to her twice-divorced grandmother tell stories about her “husbands.” As a pre-teen, she answered the phones for her mother’s mediation and marriage counseling practice and typed out the paperwork 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. 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 her generation’s inherited understanding of the institution.
-
-
When we are divorced, it is still happening.
- By Anonymous User on 03-29-25
By: Haley Mlotek
-
You Could Make This Place Beautiful
- A Memoir
- By: Maggie Smith
- Narrated by: Maggie Smith
- Length: 7 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In her memoir You Could Make This Place Beautiful, poet Maggie Smith explores the disintegration of her marriage and her renewed commitment to herself in lyrical vignettes that shine, hard and clear as jewels. The book begins with one woman’s personal, particular heartbreak, but its circles widen into a reckoning with contemporary womanhood, traditional gender roles, and the power dynamics that persist even in many progressive homes.
-
-
Beautiful, relatable, profound
- By Betty Blue on 04-16-23
By: Maggie Smith
-
God Land
- A Story of Faith, Loss, and Renewal in Middle America
- By: Lyz Lenz
- Narrated by: Lyz Lenz
- Length: 6 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From drugstores in Sydney, Iowa, to skeet shooting in rural Illinois, to the mega churches of Minneapolis, Lenz set out to discover the changing forces of faith and tradition in God's country. Part journalism, part memoir, God Land is a journey into the heart of a deeply divided America. Lenz visits places of worship across the heartland and speaks to the everyday people who often struggle to keep their churches afloat and to cope in a land of instability.
-
-
Lyz understands God Land.
- By Amazon Customer on 10-07-20
By: Lyz Lenz
-
I'm Mostly Here to Enjoy Myself
- One Woman's Pursuit of Pleasure in Paris
- By: Glynnis MacNicol
- Narrated by: Glynnis MacNicol
- Length: 7 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Come to Paris, August 2021, when the City of Lights was still empty of tourists and a thirst for long-overdue pleasure gripped those who wandered its streets. After New York City emptied out in March 2020, Glynnis MacNicol, aged forty-six, unmarried with no children, spent sixteen months alone in her tiny Manhattan apartment. The isolation was punishing. A year without touch. Women are warned of invisibility as they age, but this was an extreme loneliness no one can prepare you for. When the opportunity to sublet a friend’s apartment in Paris arose, MacNicol jumped on it.
-
-
Sentence structure; descriptions
- By Marlette Hoxmeier on 07-02-24
By: Glynnis MacNicol
-
No One Tells You This
- A Memoir
- By: Glynnis MacNicol
- Narrated by: Allyson Ryan
- Length: 9 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
If the story doesn’t end with marriage or a child, what then? This question plagued Glynnis MacNicol on the eve of her 40th birthday. Despite a successful career as a writer, and an exciting life in New York City, Glynnis was constantly reminded she had neither of the things the world expected of a woman her age: a partner or a baby. She knew she was supposed to feel bad about this. After all, single women and those without children are often seen as objects of pity. Glynnis refused to be cast into either of those roles and yet the question remained: What now?
-
-
Disappointing
- By Emily on 07-13-18
By: Glynnis MacNicol
-
Keep Moving
- Notes on Loss, Creativity, and Change
- By: Maggie Smith
- Narrated by: Maggie Smith
- Length: 2 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When Maggie Smith, the award-winning author of the viral poem "Good Bones", started writing inspirational daily Twitter posts in the wake of her divorce, they unexpectedly caught fire. In this deeply moving book of quotes and essays, Maggie writes about new beginnings as opportunities for transformation. Like kintsugi, the Japanese art of mending broken ceramics with gold, Keep Moving celebrates the beauty and strength on the other side of loss. This is a book for anyone who has gone through a difficult time and is wondering: What comes next?
-
-
This is not THAT Maggie Smith
- By Scribezilla on 10-16-20
By: Maggie Smith
-
Liars
- A Novel
- By: Sarah Manguso
- Narrated by: Rebecca Lowman
- Length: 6 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When Jane, an aspiring writer, meets filmmaker John Bridges, they both want the same things: to be in love, to live a successful, creative life, and to be happy. When they marry, Jane believes she has found everything she was looking for, including—a few years later—all the attendant joys and labors of motherhood. But it’s not long until Jane finds herself subsumed by John’s ambitions, whims, and ego; in short, she becomes a wife.
-
-
Beautiful
- By Heather Demeter on 08-05-24
By: Sarah Manguso
-
Ambition Monster
- A Memoir
- By: Jennifer Romolini
- Narrated by: Jennifer Romolini
- Length: 9 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
After years of relentlessly racing up the professional ladder, Jennifer Romolini reached the kind of success many crave: a high-profile, C-suite dream job, a book well-received enough that reporters wanted to know the secrets to her success, and a gig traveling around the country giving speeches on “making it.” She had a handsome and clever husband, a precocious child. But beneath this polished surface was a powder keg of unresolved trauma and chronic overwork. It was all about to blow.
-
-
Love love love
- By James on 06-07-24
-
Emotional Labor
- The Invisible Work Shaping Our Lives and How to Claim Our Power
- By: Rose Hackman
- Narrated by: Rose Hackman
- Length: 8 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Emotional labor is essential to our society and economy, but it’s so often invisible. In this groundbreaking, journalistic deep dive, Rose Hackman shares the stories of hundreds of women, tracing the history of this kind of work and exposing common manifestations of the phenomenon. But Hackman doesn’t simply diagnose a problem—she empowers us to combat this insidious force and forge pathways for radical evolution, justice, and change.
-
-
Fantastic
- By Amazon Customer on 04-17-23
By: Rose Hackman
-
Whiskey Tender
- A Memoir
- By: Deborah Taffa
- Narrated by: Charley Flyte
- Length: 11 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Whiskey Tender traces how a mixed tribe native girl—born on the California Yuma reservation and raised in Navajo territory in New Mexico—comes to her own interpretation of identity, despite her parent’s desires for her to transcend the class and “Indian” status of her birth through education, and despite the Quechan tribe’s particular traditions and beliefs regarding oral and recorded histories.
-
-
Powerful & Informative
- By Brenda C. on 06-03-24
By: Deborah Taffa
-
A Well-Trained Wife
- My Escape from Christian Patriarchy
- By: Tia Levings
- Narrated by: Tia Levings
- Length: 10 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Recruited into the fundamentalist Quiverfull movement as a young wife, Tia Levings learned that being a good Christian meant following a list of additional life principles—a series of secret, special rules to obey. Being a godly and submissive wife in Christian Patriarchy included strict discipline, isolation, and an alternative lifestyle that appeared wholesome to outsiders. Women were to be silent, “keepers of the home.” A Well-Trained Wife is an unforgettable memoir about a woman's race to save herself and her family and details the ways that extreme views can manifest in a marriage.
-
-
A review from a chronic non-reviewer
- By T. L. P. on 08-11-24
By: Tia Levings
What listeners say about This American Ex-Wife
Highly rated for:
Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- NikkiNik
- 05-06-24
Yes, this!
Lyz thank you so much for sharing your story, a story so many of us women share. Thank you for being open and honest and vulnerable. Thank you for shining a light on the blatant inequality between women and men. Thank you for taking the time to highlight all that women do that goes unseen, unappreciated, undervalued, and simply dismissed. But most of all, I thank you because I needed your story so very, very much, to be reminded that I am not alone. Truly thank you! <3
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Debbie McNulty
- 10-15-24
Relatable Story
I loved both the content of this book and the performance. Heartbreaking, informative, and a story of resilience!
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- D.A.G.
- 02-29-24
Charming, heartbreaking, very real
Lyz Lenz is such a likable, genuine narrator and storyteller it makes an often heartbreaking tale wistful. Will likely soothe any woman navigating divorce—it’s not just you, divorce is pretty common and a lot of the reasons are the same. Thanks for writing this Lyz.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Amazon Customer
- 07-18-24
You’re Not Alone
I loved Lyz’s inflection in her voice. It makes such a difference. It helps in knowing that I am not alone in wanting my own freedom.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Laurie
- 03-03-24
Someone Needed To Write This
I’m not even done yet but this book is just leaving me agog.
Her husband sounds totally incompatible with any self respecting woman. But what really gets to me is that, in so many ways, he sounds like a personality clone of MY ex-husband, who I also left after 12 years of marriage. Are there LOTS of men like that? There must be. I feel like I dodged a bullet because I never had children with my ex. Lyz makes it clear how much worse THAT would have made things.
I can totally relate to her repeated emphasis on the absence of true partnership from the man’s side and how women are usually the ones handed a load of bull of how marriage is work that you just have to stick to.
The statistics, facts and other info peppered through the book make this an incredibly informative and eye opening read.
Every divorced woman needs to read this. I often lapse into self pity that I don’t have a man. This book reminded me that I am FREE of a bad situation and that I should be very cautious about any future decisions. More importantly, every woman thinking about marriage and children needs to read this. There is a lot of truth here. Every word of it.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
2 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Kindle Customer
- 04-05-24
Thought provoking
As someone in a troubled marriage she nails it with the inequality of being married - her comments on government and social mores were thought provoking. Society needs to have men step up and be more accountable in marriage - emotionally, physically and mentally - men only bringing home a paycheck isn’t enough and the standards of “well you’re not being physically abused so it’s fine” need to stop - this book expresses that very well.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
1 person found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Kimmerg
- 05-28-24
So real
Everything was so true, I felt like she was reading it from my soul!
I have gained a lot of personal clarity from listening to this book.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Gia Colosi
- 05-19-24
Must read
I wish my mother could have handed me this book. Reading this at an early age would have been helpful and insightful.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Janel F.
- 03-03-24
Insightful book
Lyz Lenz provides a critical view of marriage and divorce from not just her own experience, but the experiences of women in a cultural sense. I’ve never been married and may never get married, but I appreciate getting to hear her perspective on the institution.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Jackie-Rae Graham
- 05-21-24
So Relatable
It's nice hearing about how her divorce unfolded. Makes me realize that I'm not the only one that was tired of settling for less.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!