Happens Every Day: An All-Too-True Story

Isabel Gillies

Mar 2009 · Sold by Simon and Schuster

About this ebook

Isabel Gillies had a wonderful life -- a handsome, intelligent, loving husband; two glorious toddlers; a beautiful house; the time and place to express all her ebullience and affection and optimism. Suddenly, that life was over. Her husband, Josiah, announced that he was leaving her and their two young sons.

When Josiah took a teaching job at a Midwestern college, Isabel and their sons moved with him from New York City to Ohio, where Isabel taught acting, threw herself into the college community, and delighted in the less-scheduled lives of toddlers raised away from the city. But within a few months, the marriage was over. The life Isabel had made crumbled. "Happens every day," said a friend.

Far from a self-pitying diatribe, Happens Every Day reads like an intimate conversation between friends. Gillies has written a dizzyingly candid, compulsively readable, ultimately redemptive story about love, marriage, family, heartbreak, and the unexpected turns of a life. On the one hand, reading this book is like watching a train wreck. On the other hand, as Gillies herself says, it is about trying to light a candle instead of cursing the darkness, and loving your life even if it has slipped away. Hers is a remarkable new voice -- instinctive, funny, and irresistible.

Ratings and reviews

Listened via audiobook on my way to and from work. Thank goodness I was in the car by myself because like a horror movie I was talking to Isabel throughout the book like she was a girlfriend on the phone in the middle of an intense friend to friend therapy session. An amazing story, true to the bone, filled with heartache and triumph. It was so great to start knowing that disaster was going to lurk around the corner, but to also hear the good times that were once cherished by this woman. She tried so hard to hold him close and keep things from unraveling. Now I know this is a true story, so it is hard to suggest the author to take the story in a different direction or to change things about the characters, because in the end it really happened to this family. BUT if I was her friend I would have encouraged her to do a little more confronting of the other woman, it was obvious that this relationship was the cause of the distance between them. A book that I have literally passed onto my mom and would encourage everyone to both read or listen to this great story. Read by Isabel Gillies herself gave me the sense of feeling every emotion to the core.

I just finished reading this book and I can tell that is an amazing story, the way she says things you feel that she's actually talking to you. Congratulations to Isabel who did a great job writing this book. Loved it!

About the author

Isabel Gillies is a New York Times bestselling author of Happens Every Day, A Year And Six Seconds, Starry Night, and Cozy. Her writing has been published in Vogue, The New York Times, Real Simple, Cosmopolitan, GOOP, and Saveur. A lifelong New Yorker and actress for many years, she lives in Manhattan with her husband, three kids and two dogs.