Memoir exposes infidelity in academia

I'm not a fan of personal memoirs. They tend to be self-indulgent, pitying and pretentious.  Rarely are memoirs a form of true emotional catharsis – to me, they read like 300 pages of emotional masturbation. I'd much rather immerse myself in a fictional character's struggles than peek into a "real" person's private quotidian.

However, several weeks ago I picked up Isabel Gillies's newly published memoir "Happens Every Day." Reading the actress's account of her failed first marriage, I felt less like a voyeur and more like a sympathetic observer or a close friend – signs that Gillies mastered the rare task of crafting an emotionally honest, finely-drawn, cliché-free story of betrayal and forgiveness.

Gillies's memoir describes the collapse of her relationship with Oberlin poetry professor DeSales Harrison. Their relationship seems perfect in print – two good-looking, overeducated New England WASPs who love their towheaded toddlers, opera and fine dining. Unfortunately, Harrison meets a younger co-worker hired to teach eighteenth century literature and decides he loves her even more. Harrison leaves his wife of six years in less than a month.

Predictably, Gillies's healing process takes a whole lot longer: a half-year's worth of legal fees, one marriage to Wall Street Journal reporter Peter Lattman, 260 pages of manuscript and one lucrative deal with Starbucks Coffee for said manuscript to become their next featured book.

Success is said to be the best revenge, and to taste sweet. If this is true, Harrison must be envying the tortured twentieth-century poets whose work he teaches to dreadlocked Oberlin students and Gillies's literary triumph must be flavored like a vanilla frappuccino with extra whipped cream.

Several chapters of Gillies's memoir are less about her husband's adultery than a paean to her previously blissful life in Oberlin, Ohio. She lovingly details – and at times, satirizes – the town's crunchy beatniks and overzealous academics.

Gillies divulges the difficult political process of becoming a tenured professor: ("It's all a matter of praying that [the administration] won't notice you are not an Asian, lesbian, Jewish black woman from Tanzania who did her undergraduate work at Yale and her grad work at Oxford), characterizes Oberlin students as "know[ing] transgendered people and how to address them, [playing] an instrument well, and always [thinking] they are right.," and generally offers an insiders' view of academic hoi-palloi that will make students chuckle and professors choke on their Earl Gray tea.

Gillies does not only reserve her candor for Oberlin. Instead of pinning her marital split solely on Harrison, Gillies pinpoints her own personal flaws and describes how they exacerbated her relationship's problems. Still, although Gillies never makes herself out to be a victim (nor Harrison to be a reprobate, moustache-twirling adulterer), one cannot help but hate Harrison and his "other woman" – at least for a few chapters.

After all, what husband leaves his wife of six years for a woman he barely knows? What Hester Prynne with half a heart can coolly stare down at a middle-aged mother as the latter gets down on her knees in the snow, begging the object of her husband's affections to cease her flirting for the sake of the children? (Gillies actually does this at one point in the book – a scene that will make even the most cynical reader soften towards the inordinately pretty, privileged WASP.)

The book's only shortcoming is that it is, well, too short – ending a bit abruptly when it could use about 50 more pages of epilogue. After listening to Gillies dissect her anguish chronologically for most of the memoir, I felt a bit shortchanged after reaching its end, in which Gillies takes a tearful plane ride back to her childhood home in New York City. Instead, I wanted Gillies to detail how she mended her broken heart, how she met Lattman, how she felt when Harrison married the other woman and how her children dealt with the split.

Most of all, I wanted to know whether Harrison has read the memoir – a detail on which reporters and media outlets have attempted to find out by directly contacting the professor. Not surprisingly, Harrison is keeping his mouth shut. Unfortunately for him, however, no book reviewer, seller or reader can do the same.