A Year and Six Seconds

It's hard not to fall in love with this memoir of exile from one's transplanted hometown to rebuild an acting career post-divorce with two young boys in tow. Isabel Gillies returns to New York and the LAW AND ORDER soundstage shell-shocked from her husband's announcement that he is in love with a colleague. While the time is emotionally difficult, the tale is suffused with the love and support of her parents. On some level, it is this parental love story for her parents that carries the narrative forward. (A bit of outside research reveals that her parents were no slouches -- both held prestigious positions in not-for-profit organizations prior to retirement.) It is because the book is so full of love -- parent to child to grandchild -- show more that the author's sudden and delightful discovery of new romantic love feels almost meant to be. Recommended. (72) show less

http://tammydotts.wordpress.com/2011/08/30/review-a-year-and-six-seconds/

When her marriage ends, Isabel Gillies finds herself and her two young sons back in New York, living with her parents. Her memoir, A Year and Six Seconds: A Love Story, recounts her struggles to put the pieces of their lives if not back together again, at least together enough to take on a new shape.

Gillies’ voice is that of a close friend, and the memoir reads as if the reader and Gillies were catching up over a cup of coffee. The tone is engaging. Memoirs can often read as if the author is dumping all her dirty laundry onto the page for readers to revel in and for the author to take pride in. Although there’s something to be said for the “no shame” show more approach, Gillies takes a different tack.

She retells the initial days of moving back to the family home with the right mix of full disclosure and privacy. She cops to feelings of embarrassment about living with her parents and how it affects their lives, but doesn’t dwell too much on it. This is not a “woe is me” memoir. Gillies never panders to her readers, offering clichéd advice about surviving divorce or jumping into the dating pool again.

Instead, Gillies matter-of-factly describes the events of the year after her marriage ended, without excessive hand wringing or wallowing. She doesn’t whitewash events either. She’s the first to admit when she’s incapable of rising above feelings of jealousy, anger and complete sorrow. The emotions of the past are still fresh in her mind, but the perspective of time lets Gillies write about them with a slight sense of distance.

What comes through most of all is her love for her two sons. The move from a suburban college town in Ohio to Manhattan couldn’t have been easy for the family. But Gillies and her parents make the most of it for the boys. Whether it’s turning getting dressed in winter gear into a game with waiting chairs or finding the perfect nanny through Craigslist, Gillies writes with honesty about single motherhood. She has a strong support system and acknowledges it as helping get her through the year.

Details of the marriage’s end are left to Gillies' previous book, Happens Every Day: An All-True Story. A Year and Six Seconds spends its time looking at how divorcing parents try to remain a family across state lines and how Gillies is able to accept that reconciliation is out of the question and she wouldn’t want it anyway.

The six seconds of the title refers something a friend told Gillies – it takes six seconds to fall in love. As she explains, six-second love isn’t “a fleeting through about how someone is hot, and I’m not talking about a crush; I’m talking about knowing with certainty that you could spend your life with this person. In an instant, not only are you down the aisle, but you have had the babies, you have reached old age, and you are buried side by side under a tree for all eternity. In six seconds, you see it all. And you feel it; you feel the love that will make your whole life shift. Six-second love is real, but it doesn’t always get you to happily ever after.”

Gillies gets a second chance at six-second love toward the end of the memoir, about a year chronologically after her first marriage ends. This isn’t a spoiler: Gillies tells readers up front that there’s a second love in her life. But the memoir doesn’t follow Gillies on madcap adventures in dating. She talks about her first post-marriage kiss (a true New York moment) and some of the dates she went on, but they’re not important to who she is now and Gillies rightly leaves details out of the memoir. Some readers may want more from the book in this regard, but the love story of the subtitle is really about Gillies’ love for her sons and (as corny as it can sound) for herself.

If the memoir had ended before Gillies' second marriage or even before she met her husband, you have the feeling she and the boys were going to be okay. And you look forward to the next time you can get together over coffee. show less

RATING: 5 out 5

In this follow-up memoir to “It Happens Every Day”, Isabel Gillies, bares her heart and all the raw emotions that came in the aftermath of her separation from her husband who has fallen in love with someone else. She leaves her home, most of her possessions, most of the possessions of her children, and the Midwestern town she has called home.

She is honest with her hurt and pain as she heads back to her parents’ apartment in New York with her two very small little boys. My first thoughts when I began this book was why would she move back in with her parents but once the scene unfolds, you realize that it was the best move she could have made for all of them in terms of a safe, warm, loving cocoon that helped both her show more and the boys heal. Her frankness about the obstacles, uncertainty, and the depression that comes to her in waves almost every day, is a wonderful gift to other women who may be going through this kind of separation and loss of a relationship and will help them see that they are the only out there with the same or similar problems.

This is wonderful personal story that takes you through all the different stages of the failing of a relationship. You wonder at times if Isabel will come out on the other in tack or will she withdraw with the help of her aging parents. Her story is one that can be recommended to a friend who might be going through a separation or divorce, to someone you know who is finding it difficult to move on just yet, or simply anyone who want to see that there is light on the other side of any bad situation. show less

The second memoir from Gillies, this time about regrouping after her failed marriage, and falling in love again. Oh, how I wish I had Gillies' sense of life! She arrives with her two toddler sons at her parents' apartment in New York, after her husband leaves her for another woman. She learns to pick up the pieces and go on. She outlines how moving in with her parents affected them all (they are saints!), and how she met Peter, another divorced parent, on the playground with their collective kids. I didn't like the last chapter - too preachy - but the rest was very good. I just had to go to wikipedia to really see who the ex was, and see more about the new hubby.

A Year and Six Seconds By Isabel Gillies A memoir written by author/actress/mother/daughter/friend Isabel Gillies. Ms. Gillies is everywoman. She is honest, funny, witty, clever, resourceful and smart. She shares her story as a continuation from her excellent first memoir Happens Everyday, which detailed her idyllic life in Ohio and her heartbreaking and all too commonplace divorce from her husband a short time later. Every woman can find some aspect of this story to relate to, whether its divorce or simply having a similar relationship with your own mother. Its a quick, smile to yourself, a tear in your eye, one night read. Enjoy. Learn Something. And note to self: Read Happens Everyday first.

Eh... Her first book is much better. This is a fine, light read. It's like having drinks with a girlfriend, albeit one going through a breakup. Fine, but nothing to write home about.

Reviewed for Shelf Awareness for Readers, August 2011