Reckless Years - by Heather Chaplin (Paperback)

About the Book

"In this page-turning memoir, a woman tries to reinvent her life after divorce and discovers that sometimes finding yourself is not all it's cracked up to be. Trapped in a dissatisfying marriage for nearly a decade, New York journalist Heather Chaplin finally summons the courage to leave. On her own, she finds herself intoxicatingly free, pursuing adventure, and juggling romance on two continents in multiple cities. She contemplates the meaning of life; she falls for a handsome Irishman. But as the adventures progress, Chaplin's own reckless choices send her spiraling downward--and toward a reckoning she's avoided all her life. Pulled from Chaplin's own diaries, Reckless Years is a raw, propulsive debut: unfailingly profound and impossible to put down"--

Book Synopsis

The "searingly honest, brilliantly written" (Delia Ephron, New York Times bestselling author) memoir of a woman trying to reinvent her life who finds, after her divorce, that true freedom to make any choice means being free to make every mistake.

"What to do now, I don't know. You see, I no longer love my husband."

A thirty-something journalist living in Brooklyn, Heather Chaplin has to acknowledge the obvious: her marriage is over, and her career is stagnating. When she summons the courage to leave her husband behind, her life turns into an emotional roller coaster. She is soon dating a cast of characters in New York until an impulsive trip to Ireland thrusts her into the orb of a magnetic man named Kieran. But just when she believes herself to be on the brink of what she'd always wanted, a series of setbacks throw her into a volatile spiral downwards. Her independence becomes a frightening prison. As she struggles to find her way back to the world she once knew, she must confront the reality of the past to find her way to the possibilities of her future.

Narrated with a uniquely provocative voice, Reckless Years is a raw, propulsive debut: unfailingly profound and impossible to put down. Chaplin writes about all the things women aren't supposed to say or feel: rage, manipulation, sexual desire--even madness. "Dramatic, adventurous, and heartbreaking" (Kirkus Reviews), yet ultimately redemptive, it is the story of losing yourself in the middle of a comeback and finding yourself in the most surprising of places.

Review Quotes

"Chaplin's epistolary memoir, extracted from two years of recovered emails and journals she'd kept beginning in 2006, chronicles the dramatic, adventurous, and heartbreaking story of a restless married woman who'd fallen out of love with her husband of 13 years...[A] satisfying memoir that will appeal most to women who've found themselves fleeing hopeless relationships."
--Kirkus Reviews

"Shocking, searingly honest, disturbing, brilliantly written. Reading this memoir is like being in a car speeding into an explosion and miraculously coming out the other side. Thank God. It would be awful if a writer this talented hadn't made it."
--Delia Ephron, author of SIRACUSA

"Reckless Years is a stunningly forensic account of the end of a marriage and its aftermath, which combines the honesty of memoir with the urgency of good fiction and a dry wit that, for all the darkness of the story, makes Chaplin a joy to spend time with."
--Emma Brockes, author of SHE LEFT ME THE GUN

About the Author

Heather Chaplin is a writer living in Brooklyn. She's written about all kinds of things in her journalism career and is the founding director of the Journalism + Design program at The New School. In the evenings, she can be found taking ballet classes she has no business attending but does anyway. Reckless Years is her second book.