“The Anatomy of a Divorce” by Bazin in brief
For the first time we meet with the main characters of the novel, Alina and Louis Davromel, during their divorce proceedings. Twenty years they lived together, gave birth to four children, but at forty-four years, Louis decided to start a new life with a young Odile, whom he has known for five years, and to get away from the old, petty, grumpy and narrow-minded wife who plagues him with constant hysterics and scandals.
Until the final decision of the court, Alina and the children remain in the house bought by Louis, and their father is allowed to communicate with them on the second and fourth Sunday of each month, and even on vacation: at his disposal exactly half of all vacations. Children in a family of different ages and with different characters. Leon, the eldest son, is seventeen years old. This is a rather reserved, calm young man, to whom the absence of a father in the house is in some way by the hand, since now he feels himself master here. Agatha, a fifteen-year-old girl,
The events of the novel cover a seven-year period, each significant change in the development of the plot with undoubted accuracy is highlighted by the narrator reporting his specific date. In April 1966, six months after the start of the divorce, Louis informs Odile’s relatives that in July she will become his wife. This is what happens. In early August, Louis carries his children to La Baule, a piedmont district where Odile comes from, to introduce the children to his new wife. Odile, a twenty-year-old slender girl with long black hair and blond eyes, shows a maximum of tact and patience when meeting her. Soon children get used to the environment and feel quite comfortable. Only Agatha, an ally of the mother, uses any excuse to vex
Alina, meanwhile, at the initiative of her friend and also Emma’s single mother, is trying to visit a club of divorced and abandoned women. There, she meets with Master Grand, a woman lawyer, who later replaces Maeter Leray, who did not please her with her softness.
A year after the marriage of Louis, his parents, Louise and Fernand Davermel come to visit him and are amazed at the sight of the house taken by the newlyweds a year ago on the outskirts of Paris. Everything in it is now clean, repaired, comfortable. They pay tribute to the economic talents of the new daughter-in-law, to whom, in the beginning, they were not very friendly. When they find out that this house is not only renovated, but already bought by a young couple, and Louis, who works in a design firm, with the support of Odili returned to his old hobby – painting, then with humility and joy admit that their son did an excellent choice and not in vain decided to leave from a quarrelsome wife who oppressed him with her tediousness and disbelief in his ability.
The former house where the Davremel family lived had to be sold, and Alina and her children now live in a four-room apartment, so that the girls live alone in one room, and Guy, whom Leon does not let into his room, is forced to sleep on the couch in the living room with which he can only have when everyone else deigns to go to rest. Guy learns worse and worse, he is even left for the second year. Teachers who understand that it is difficult for a boy to be torn between two families: his father’s family, where he is loved and where he has his own room, and the mother’s house, which, in rude terms, sets him against his father and where the atmosphere leaves much to be desired, so that Alina took Guy to a consultation with the Center for mentally handicapped children.
In the family of Louis to be replenished: Odile is waiting for the child. Alik also annoys the former husband with endless calls to the court, appeals, cassations, begging additional interest to those alimony that Louis scrupulously pays to her and the children. She was tired of living alone: if her husband married a second time, then why not get married. Ginetta, Alina’s sister, arranges a meeting with a widower, a retired military man, at her home. Acquaintance, however, has no continuation, because Alina, no matter how difficult it may be, is not going to associate her life with anyone. It warms the idea that if it is neglected, then she can afford the same thing.
Odili has a boy who is called Felix. Louis immediately informs Alina about this and asks that she transmit this news to the children and they could see her brother, but she purposely hides this news. When Rosa and Guy learn about the act of the mother, they are enraged: in addition to the endless attacks on her father, she also forbids them to see her brother. Younger children still used every opportunity to visit Noghan to their father, even for five minutes, and now they want to move to him. Rosa and Guy decide to take extreme measures to secure the transfer of custody of them to their father: they run away from home and, while sitting at the station, write plaintive letters to all the courts with a request to review their case.
Alina, worried about the lack of children, sends Leon and Agatha, who always uses as a spy in his father’s house, to find out if the children have escaped to him. After the next trial, younger children are allowed to move to their father. The elders are also moving farther away from their mother. Leon is already quite grown up, he has a girlfriend, and even more often you can see Agatu on a motorcycle behind some strong guy. Alina looks at the daughter company through her fingers: if only she did not get carried away seriously by someone alone. But, after talking with the young guys, Agatha concludes that she is more interested in adult men, and falls in love with Edmond, the owner of a leather goods store. Edmond is married, but his wife is in a madhouse. Agata does not want to repeat her mother’s mistakes and wants to be able to break her connection at any time, without a divorce.
Alina in all possible ways tries to entice the younger children back, but she does not succeed. The children have grown up and are already perfectly able to stand up for themselves. However, twice a month and on vacation they continue to see her.
Three and a half years after the beginning of the divorce proceedings, Louis and Alina, completely exhausted by the endless fees of lawyers and other charges connected with the proceedings, finally decide, by mutual consent, to complete it. Louis has the opportunity to devote more time and money to his family. Leon once a month will now come to his father for a check. The same opportunity is given to Agatha, but it is on the last day of judgment that she permanently leaves her mother’s house to live with Edmond. Agatha feels like a traitor, because she was closest to her mother, but she can no longer live under Alina’s wing. Agata does not leave her even her new phone, but only gives the opportunity to write letters on demand.
Almost a year after these events, in February 1970, three older children gather together in a cafe and decide from this time to meet more often and try to somehow reconcile their parents.
Once Alina, not having coped with nerves, near the old house by the car gets in failure as a result of which it appears in hospital with the broken legs, hands and ribs. The only thing that brings her comfort is that all the children, even Agatha, whom she has not seen for a long time, come to visit her.
In November 1972, Leon married Solange, whom he had met several years before. In a year he will become, like his grandfather on his father’s side, a pharmacist. To be proud of their children, sometimes to see them and live in an apartment smelling of cats, and even paid for by her ex-husband, that’s all that remains for Alina. Without joy and without a purpose, Alina quietly extends her life and slowly, slowly dies.
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