The marriage ends as modern marriages do, with a Complaint for Divorce and a notice from Family Court. Then comes the heart of the matter: the long back and forth between the attorneys on both sides of the case with their clients and with the court. In a brilliantly constructed series of asides and the digressions, Rieger uses notes and letters to conjure up Sophie's past as well as her client's in a neatly presented counterpoint. Mia Durkheim stands on the verge of putting her married life behind her. Sophie Diehl, her attorney, tries, with the help of an actress friend, to figure out how to handle the presence of a new man in her life.
Stories within stories add to the complication of the novel. There's the little narrative about the flirtation between Sophie's novelist mother and the managing partner of her law firm. There's the story of Sophie's actress friend and her burgeoning career. There's the bitter rivalry between Sophie and a more experienced divorce lawyer at her firm. Moreover, we get a brief course in the use of legal precedent in matters of divorce and a dramatic intertwining of the law and human feelings.
The "woe that is in marriage" remains a great subject. Working it out in what the novelist calls "Epistolary 2.0" only adds to its pleasures.