Ex-Love

New York: Dodd, Mead & Company. Very Good+ in Good dj. 1937. First Edition. Hardcover. [book is lightly shelfworn, spine slightly turned, a bit of soiling to edges of text block; jacket is worn at spine and along edges, spine a bit faded, a couple of small tears and associated short creasing along bottom edge, some random staining on front panel]. Novel that presents "a searching commentary on modern divorce," by way of an expose of the alimony racket. The plot involves a woman who gratuitiously divorces her husband and demands a large alimony settlement -- but even that's not good enough for her, OH no: even though she herself is well-off, she "bitterly resents [her ex's] second marriage and when [his] business fails she revenges herself by insisting that he continue to pay the exorbitant alimony." The author, the daughter of Kansas editor/novelist Edgar W. Howe, scored a big hit with her autobiographical first novel, "Rebellion" (1927). In the words of one critic, her fiction "is shot through with gothic elements—family secrets, letters withheld from dependents, and rich, eccentric visitors—in the same way that her father's work is. Her novels also share with her father's a tendency to preach," which certainly seems applicable to the present work. .