Obsessions: Strangers
The Book America Can't Put Down
Belle Burden has a hold on American women. Her debut book, Strangers, is the number one New York Times bestseller. She’s a Harvard-educated lawyer with limited professional writing experience, and has written a memoir so absorbing that people cannot put it down. Every friend of mine seems to have read it in one or two sittings, and I have too, which is not typical.
For those who haven’t read it, Strangers dives into the overnight dissolution of Belle’s seemingly picture perfect marriage during the height of Covid, when she and her husband decamped from Manhattan to their Martha’s Vineyard beach house. She finds out about his affair by phone from a stranger, and afterwards her husband walked out, said he didn’t want their life anymore, and told her to keep the kids. He never came back. That might sound unremarkable. The book is anything but.
She spends chapters recounting the evolution and demise of their relationship with a brutal honesty that no woman in her social position would normally expose. Their bank statements, the realities of her inheritance (she came from an extremely wealthy, glamorous family, her grandmother being the style icon Babe Paley), and the debt she inherited with it. Nothing is sugarcoated, including her admission of enjoying the role her husband took as financial manager of the household, and the safety she felt in letting him take the traditional lead as she stepped away from her career to support his and raise their children.
Readers, and Oprah, find this frustrating. How could such a modern, educated, legally-savvy woman give up so much control? She’d paid for their Tribeca loft and Martha’s Vineyard house with her inheritance, and after agreeing to edit their prenup at his suggestion, she put all of it on the line.
The frustration is what makes it so compelling. The book documents a legitimate, unthinkable fear, delivered by a brilliant writer, and it’s relatable in a way that transcends Belle’s financial position. In some ways she’s a real-person version of Gwyneth Paltrow: blonde, smart, living an enviable lifestyle, but without getting caught up in it, without the Goop-ness. It makes sense that Gwyneth will be starring in the Netflix adaptation, and serving as executive producer.
I rarely buy into trends and I’m certainly not an on-trend book reader, so picking this up was out of character. But I was curious. It seemed like every married person I know was talking about it, and reading it as a single woman still resonated. It underscored experiences and fears all the same, but mostly I found myself empathizing with the writer. She really brought you in.
I psychoanalyzed the book with my mom, who is a shrink, and she diagnosed Belle’s husband with various personality disorders. She has done the same with many people in my life, so I take it with a grain of salt. But I found myself wanting to reach out to Belle and confirm what she probably already suspects about her husband being a sociopath.
