Le Divorce is more a novel of manners than of serious social or moral commentary. The novel is set in the 1990s, and many contemporary social concerns flicker across its narrator Isabel's mental screen. Most have been selected, at least in part, for satire or for plot devices.

Hence the book's social focus is wide rather than deep.

Foremost among these issues, as the tide suggests, is divorce. Isabel and Roxeanne grew up in California in a culture where divorce is a familiar aspect of life.

The two sisters are technically stepsisters; Isabel's father Chester and Roxeanne's mother Margeeve were each married to someone else, then divorced, before finding each other. In their world divorce is a frequent rite of passage. Many people, the parents believe, have to marry and divorce at least once before "getting it right." In their case, the process has led to...