In 2003, Rachel Cusk published A Life’s Work, her provocative and startlingly funny memoir of the cataclysm of motherhood, and launched debates that continue to this day. Now, in her most relevant work yet, Cusk offers an intimate exploration of divorce and its tremendous impact on the lives of womenand discovers opportunity as well as pain.

An unflinching chronicle of the upheaval of her own recent separation, Aftermath is also a vivid study of divorce’s complex place in our society. With candor as fearless as it is affecting, Rachel Cusk maps a transformative chapter of her life with wit and acuity, and in a way that will help us understand our own.