PARTING SHOTS

A Manhattan divorce lawyer triumphs over her own divorce—in Bright's lively if predictable follow-up to Futures (1983) and Infidelities (1986). By her mid-40s, smug and attractive Dani Sloane has managed to become a moderately successful attorney in New York, the mother of a reasonably sane college freshman, and the wife of her solid, dependable, trustworthy college boyfriend. Oops—scratch that last part, as Dani discovers when husband Ted confesses one day that he's had it with responsibility and now wants out of the marriage. Stunned, Dani succumbs to just the sort of self-defeating denial and red-hot, volcanic rage that she's always secretly despised in her divorce clients. It doesn't help to learn that the catalyst for Ted's sudden transformation is a red-haired young waif whom Dani helped out of an abusive marriage years before. While Ted and his lover escape to the Caribbean, Dani takes out her fury on the hapless husbands of the women she represents. The happy result is that Dani's reputation soars in the divorce courts, attracting the ardor of one of New York's most eligible bachelors and introducing her to the city's upper crust. Soon, Dani is so swamped by dinner party invitations, weekends with her lover, high-profile cases, and apartment redecorating that she no longer has time to hassle her ex-husband through his attorney. Then, one day, she realizes she no longer wants to—a sure sign that another abandoned woman has survived post-divorce despair to emerge a wiser, more forgiving, and resolutely unmarried woman. Wildly unrealistic feel-good fiction—but therapeutic, perhaps, for some.