If you’re a woman married to a man – or if you’re a woman considering getting married to a man, or if you’re a woman contemplating no longer being married to a man, or if you’re a man to whom any of the above applies – you’ve either read Belle Burden’s Strangers, or someone has recommended you read it, or someone is about to. It is one of those books. It is ubiquitous: on all the bestseller lists, on Oprah, all over your Instagram feed, riling people up on X. Even if you have escaped it so far, you won’t for much longer, because there is a Netflix version starring Gwyneth Paltrow in the works. And now there is the inevitable backlash.

The memoir, which was published in the US in January having started life initially as a viral Modern Love column in the New York Times, is – on one level – the painfully ordinary story of the dissolution of a marriage in midlife. On another, it is a sorry tale of extraordinary privilege and colossal financial foolishness.

The short, more relatable version is that Burden thought she and her husband – she calls him “James” (while four seconds of googling reveals his real name, we’ll stick with James) – were in what had been a happy, if somewhat staid, marriage, for nearly 21 years. They had three children together. She was soon to turn 50. One night, a week or so into the first Covid lockdown, Burden was mopping the kitchen floor when she got a call from a stranger who said his wife was having an affair with James.

Not even 12 hours after the call,........

© The Irish Times