SATA
WORK TITLE: Starry Night
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE: 2/9/1970
WEBSITE: http://www.isabelgillies.com/
CITY: New York
STATE: NY
COUNTRY: United States
NATIONALITY: American
LAST VOLUME: CANR 291
RESEARCHER NOTES:
LC control no.: no2008113179
LCCN Permalink: https://lccn.loc.gov/no2008113179
HEADING: Gillies, Isabel, 1970-
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100 1_ |a Gillies, Isabel, |d 1970-
400 1_ |a Gillies, Isabelle, |d 1970-
670 __ |a Metropolitan, c2006: |b title credits (Isabel Gillies)
670 __ |a Internet movie database, July 31, 2008: |b (Isabel Gillies, b. 9 Feb 1970, New York; birth name Isabel Boyer Gillies; alternate name Isabelle Gillies)
PERSONAL
Born February 9, 1970, in New York, NY; daughter of Archibald Lewis (retired president of the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts) and Linda Lee (retired director of the Vincent Astor Foundation) Gillies; married DeSales Harrison, December 17, 1999 (divorced); married Peter Todd Lattman (a legal columnist), October 13, 2007; children: (first marriage) two sons; one stepdaughter.
EDUCATION:New York University, B.F.A.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Actor and writer. Actor in films, including Metropolitan, 1990; Straight to One (short), 1994; Nadja, 1994; Comfortably Numb, 1995; Crackerjack (short), 1995; The Vampire Project (video), 1995; One Way Out, 1996; I Shot Andy Warhol, 1996; Chocolate for Breakfast (also known as Four and a Half Women), 1998; The Girl under the Waves, 2001; Happy Here and Now, 2002; On.Line, 2002; New Orleans, Mon Amour, 2008; and Speechless, 2008. Actor in television shows, including “Bad Girl,” Law and Order, National Broadcasting Corporation (NBC), 1998; “Bay of Married Pigs,” Sex and the City, Home Box Office, 1998; The $treet, Fox, 2000; and Law and Order: Special Victims Unit, NBC, 1999-2011.
AWARDS:Top Ten Books of 2009, National Public Radio’s Fresh Air, for Happens Every Day.
WRITINGS
Contributor to periodicals, including Vogue, Cosmopolitan, Real Simple, Saveur, and the New York Times.
SIDELIGHTS
Isabel Gillies, an actor best known for her recurring role on the popular NBC television series Law and Order: Special Victims Unit, garnered a solid critical reception for her young-adult novel Starry Nights, a “touching story of first love, betrayal, and friendship,” in the words of Booklist reviewer Diane Colson. Additionally, Gillies is the author of a pair of highly regarded adult memoirs, Happens Every Day: An All-Too-True Story and A Year and Six Seconds: A Love Story.
Starry Night focuses on Wren, an artistic-minded fifteen year old from a wealthy family who dreams of spending her junior year abroad studying in France. Wearing her mother’s Oscar de la Renta dress, Wren attends a gala party at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where her father serves as director. At the gathering, Wren finds unexpected magic in the form of the mysterious Nolan, who captures her heart. Soon, Wren’s fascination with Nolan eclipses all her own plans and threatens her other relationships. “Gillies captures the impulsive nature of teen love and its consequences,” observed a Kirkus Reviews writer, who also appreciated how the absence of a facile happy ending “underscores the grittily real feeling of the story’s emotional affairs.” A Publishers Weekly contributor cited the author’s portrait of Wren as a highlight of the work, remarking that the protagonist’s “rude awakening from her fairy-tale happiness will be felt deeply, alerting romantics to the danger of losing oneself” while infatuated with a suitor. Recommending Starry Night for adolescent readers, Joy Piedmont wrote in School Library Journal that the novel’s “conversational style will give readers the feeling that the protagonist is a close friend sharing her deepest secrets.”
Happens Every Day recounts the story of Gillies’s first marriage and the heartbreak that resulted when that seemingly wonderful union suddenly and unexpectedly ended. Reviewers gave Gillies high marks for her open, honest account of her divorce and for finding humor in the often bleak situation. Writing for Entertainment Weekly, Leah Greenblatt commented that Gillies’s “collapse feels real, and in Happens Every Day there’s redemptive grace in her struggle.” Gillies followed Happens Every Day with A Year and Six Seconds, which recounts the process of rebuilding her life in the year following her divorce. Discussing the work in Kirkus Reviews, a contributor noted that the book offers “plenty of love, humor and hope to spare.”
BIOCRIT
BOOKS
Gillies, Isabel, Happens Every Day: An All-Too-True Story, Scribner (New York, NY), 2009.
Gillies, Isabel, A Year and Six Seconds: A Love Story, Hyperion (New York, NY), 2011.
PERIODICALS
Booklist, July 1, 2011, Joanne Wilkinson, review of A Year and Six Seconds: A Love Story, p. 14; September 1, 2014, Diane Colson, review of Starry Night, p. 111.
BookSmack! Reviews, June 16, 2011, review of A Year and Six Seconds.
California Bookwatch, July, 2009, review of Happens Every Day; October, 2011, review of A Year and Six Seconds.
Daily Variety, January 16, 2002, review of On.Line, p. 22.
Entertainment Weekly, March 27, 2009, Leah Greenblatt, review of Happens Every Day, p. 64.
Hollywood Reporter, July 7, 2003, review of On.Line, p. 10.
Kirkus Reviews, February 1, 2009, review of Happens Every Day; April 15, 2011, review of A Year and Six Seconds; August 1, 2014, review of Starry Night.
Library Journal, February 1, 2009, Audrey Snowden, review of Happens Every Day, p. 71; October 15, 2009, review of Happens Every Day, p. 49.
New York Times, March 23, 1990, Vincent Canby, review of Metropolitan, p. 18; December 19, 1999, “Weddings; Isabel Gillies, DeSales Harrison”; October 14, 2007, “Isabel Gillies, Peter Lattman,” p. 18.
Publishers Weekly, June 29, 2009, review of Happens Every Day, p. 126; June 6, 2011, review of A Year and Six Seconds, p. 35; July 21, 2014, review of Starry Night, p. 184.
School Library Journal, August, 2015, Joy Piedmont, review of Starry Night, p. 98.
USA Today, April 14, 2009, Deirdre Donahue, review of Happens Every Day, p. 4.
Variety, April 26, 1999, “Chocolate for Breakfast,” p. 48.
Vogue, February, 2009, “An Affair to Remember,” p. 70.
Voice of Youth Advocates, October, 2014, Shanna Miles, review of Starry Night, p. 64.
ONLINE
Bookish, https://www.bookish.com/ (October 21, 2014), “Isabel Gillies on Writing and Dyslexia.”
Cleveland Plain Dealer Online, http://www.cleveland.com/ (March 29, 2009), Karen R. Long, review of Happens Every Day.
Daily Beast, http://www.thedailybeast.com/ (August 22, 2011), Carolyn Sun, interview with Gillies.
Gothamist, http://gothamist.com/ (April 7, 2009), Jen Chung, “Isabel Gillies, Author of Happens Every Day.”
Internet Movie Database, http://www.imdb.com/ (July 15, 2017), acting profile.
Isabel Gillies Home Page, http://www.isabelgillies.com (July 15, 2017).
National Public Radio (NPR), http://www.npr.org/ (March 17, 2009), Maureen Corrigan, review of Happens Every Day.
Time Out New York Kids, http://newyorkkids.timeout.com/ (October 10, 2009), Melissa Fleming, author interview.
USA Today Online, http://www.usatoday.com/ (April 13, 2009), Deirdre Donahue, “Isabel Gillies’s Memoir: An Iced Cup of Revenge.”*
Isabel Gillies
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Isabel Gillies
Born Isabel Boyer Gillies
February 9, 1970 (age 47)
New York City, New York, United States
Occupation Author, former actress
Years active 1990–2011
Spouse(s) DeSales Harrison (1999–2005; divorced); 2 sons
Peter Lattman (2007–present); 1 stepdaughter
Children 3
Isabel Gillies (born February 9, 1970, in New York City, New York) is an American author and former actress. She played Elliot Stabler's wife, Kathy, in Law & Order: Special Victims Unit. Her memoir, "Happens Every Day," was a New York Times bestseller, and her most recent book is the young adult novel Starry Night.
Contents [hide]
1 Career
2 Books
3 Personal life
4 References
5 External links
Career[edit]
Gillies landed her first movie role when Whit Stillman cast her as Cynthia McLean in his pioneering independent film, Metropolitan (1990).[1] Other film credits include Finley in Another Girl Another Planet (1992), Alison in I Shot Andy Warhol (1996), Moira Ingalls in On Line (2002),[2] Isabel in Happy Here and Now (2002), and Kathryn in New Orleans, Mon Amour (2008).
Prior to her role as Kathy Stabler on SVU, which she played from 1999 to 2011, Gillies appeared in "Bad Girl," an episode of the original Law & Order series, playing Monica Johnson, a young woman who murders an undercover police officer and then undergoes a religious conversion during her trial and is born again. In 2000, she played the role of Alison in the short-lived Fox series, The $treet.
Books[edit]
Gillies' 2009 memoir, Happens Every Day, is about her leaving New York City to follow her first husband to Oberlin College, only to see her marriage suddenly crumble.[3] Happens Every Day was a New York Times bestseller and featured by Starbucks as a nationwide selection for its book program. NPR's Fresh Air selected it as a Top Ten Book of 2009.[4][5] Her follow-up memoir, A Year and Six Seconds, was published in 2011.[6][7] Her most recent book, a young adult novel, Starry Night, was published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux in September 2014.[8]
Personal life[edit]
Gillies grew up in New York City. She attended the Brearley School until age sixteen. She then attended the Nightingale-Bamford Schooll from eleventh grade until her graduation. Gillies struggled with severe dyslexia all throughout school. She is the daughter of Linda and Archibald Gillies. She graduated from New York University with a BFA in Film. She went to Rhode Island School of Design as a freshman before dropping out to film Metropolitan, and then finished college at NYU.
She was married to DeSales Harrison, an English professor at Oberlin College, from 1999 to 2005.[9]
Gillies married Peter Lattman, an editor at The New York Times, on October 13, 2007.[10]
Gillies spends her Summers in Islesboro, Maine[11]
Isabel Gillies
Biography
Showing all 15 items
Jump to: Overview (2) | Mini Bio (1) | Spouse (2) | Trivia (10)
Overview (2)
Date of Birth 9 February 1970, New York City, New York, USA
Birth Name Isabel Boyer Gillies
Mini Bio (1)
Isabel Gillies was born on February 9, 1970 in New York City, New York, USA as Isabel Boyer Gillies. She is an actress, known for Metropolitan (1990), Law & Order: Special Victims Unit (1999) and Nadja (1994). She has been married to Peter Lattman since October 13, 2007. She was previously married to DeSales Harrison III.
Spouse (2)
Peter Lattman (13 October 2007 - present)
DeSales Harrison III (17 December 1999 - 27 February 2006) (divorced) (2 children)
Trivia (10)
Her mother, Linda Gillies, was President of the Vincent Astor Foundation. She appeared as Mrs. Rouget in Metropolitan (1990).
Her father, Archibald Gillies, was President of the Andy Warhol Foundation.
Graduated from New York University with a BFA in Film.
Stepmother of a girl.
Lives in Manhattan [2009].
Gave birth to her 1st child at age 31, a son in December 2001. Child's father is her now ex-1st husband, DeSales Harrison.
Gave birth to her 2nd child, a son, with her now ex-1st husband, DeSales Harrison.
(October 13, 2007) Married for the 2nd time her boyfriend of 18 months Peter Lattman.
Wrote a memoir titled "Happens Every Day: An All-Too-True Story" about the collapse of her first marriage. [March 2009]
Before her recurring role as Kathy Stabler on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit (1999), she played a murder suspect in an episode of its parent series Law & Order (1990).
Isabel Gillies
EDIT
SHARE
Isabel Gillies
KathyStabler
...as Kathy Stabler (Season 1)
Characters
Kathy Stabler & Monica Johnson
Date of birth
9 February 1970
Place of birth
New York City, New York, USA
KathyStablerPaternity
...as Kathy Stabler (Season 9)
IMDb profile
Isabel Gillies is an actress who played two different characters in Law & Order and Law & Order: Special Victims Unit. She is known for her role as Detective Elliot Stabler's wife Kathy Stabler. She appeared in almost every season of the SVU series. She also played the role of Monica Johnson in the L&O episode "Bad Girl".
Isabel's family likes to take summer vacations in Maine that has been a family annual tradition for many generations. Her parents were into politics; her father is a retired former President of Andy Warhol Foundation while her mother is a retired Director of New York City of Education. Isabel got married in December of 1999 to DeSales Harrison, moving many times before settling to Oberlin, Ohio, where DeSales got a teaching job at Oberlin College, as did Isabel for acting. They had two children born in 2001 and 2004 before DeSales fell in love with another woman at the college, getting a divorce. Isabel and the children moved back to New York where she got back with SVU (her character was separated, getting a divorce and did not appear in any episodes in season 7). Isabel met Wallstreet Journalist Peter Lattman at a park for a party of a mutual friend where they played Monkey-in-the-middle with their children (Peter has a daughter from a previous marriage) and they got married on October 13, 2007 in New York City (Mariska Hargitay attended the wedding). In 2009, Isabel released her memoir about her first marriage called Happens Every Day. She is currently writing her second memoir, a sequel, called The Sugar Basket, that will be released in 2011. She has apparently quit acting altogether, focusing on her bookwriting.
The Author
ABOUT ISABEL GILLIES
Isabel Gillies, a lifelong New Yorker and actress for many years, is the New York Times best selling author of Happens Every Day, A Year and Six Seconds and the upcoming Starry Night (FSG), a young adult novel about first love. Her work has been published in Vogue, The New York Times, Real Simple, Cosmopolitan and Saveur. She lives in Manhattan with her husband, kids and Maude the dog.
Camille Styles
ENTERTAINING
FOOD & DRINK
LIVING
BEAUTY & STYLE
GOALS
Entertaining With
ISABEL GILLIES
Chanel Dror
SEPTEMBER 2ND, 2015
The Penobscot Bay, Maine
I’ve never been to Maine, but I know I’d love it there. Growing up, one of my close friends headed east each summer to spend 6 weeks rope swinging and eating fresh seafood with her family, and I couldn’t help but feel the steady onset of jealousy upon hearing the stories and seeing the photos when she’d return in August. Sure my family traveled, but being a summer-in-Maine family isn’t just traveling — it’s something you’re born into.
No one is more familiar with that birthright than today’s Entertaining With subject. As an actress for many years (that’s Kathy Stabler for my fellow Law & Order SVU fanatics!) and a New York Times best selling author, there’s no question that Isabel Gillies is familiar with life in the Big Apple. But when you add summering-in-Maine to her bio, it becomes clear that this Manhattanite is about as New Yorker as you can get. In preparation for the last long weekend of the season, Isabel invited our team into her family vacation home to experience summer in Maine as she’s known it since childhood: shopping at the farmer’s market, gardening, picnicking on the dock, and splashing around in the bay. Click through for all the gorgeous details, and we’d love to know: Does your family have a vacation spot you return to year after year?
*photography by Buff Strickland
VIEW THE GALLERY
1 of 16
picking raspberries
Always in your refrigerator:
Greek yogurt, milk, spinach, almond butter, good Chardonnay, apples, majool dates and eggs.
Your must-have entertaining tool:
A good night’s sleep.
2 of 16
isabel gillies' garden
Tell us about your amazing garden? It looks like an absolute dream!
This is my mother’s garden! It’s a combination of cutting flowers, herbs and some vegetables. Her favorite are the nasturtiums. They crawl all over the garden and last until the frost. In the early morning while I lie in bed, I can see my mother walking to the garden in her bathrobe. She noodles around in there, pulling a few weeds and cutting fresh flowers for the day. When I get myself into the kitchen for breakfast there are bright sunflowers or sweet peas in a little vase in the middle of the table. I have learned everything I know about entertaining from her.
Isabel Gilles, Author of A Year and Six Seconds, Talks About Divorce and Remarriage
Does a failed marriage and moving in with your parents have to be a bad thing? Carolyn Sun talks to author Isabel Gillies, whose new memoir has a surprising take on divorce.
Carolyn Sun
CAROLYN SUN
08.22.11 6:24 PM ET
The bestselling writer Isabel Gillies is vacationing in Maine with her parents, her second husband, and her two children from her first husband and her step-daughter. And her ex-husband. With his current wife. And their new baby. You get the picture. Her unorthodox way of making family out of life’s lemons turned into her second memoir, A Year and Six Seconds. By turns hilarious and sad, it chronicles the story of her moving in with her parents at age 35, accompanied by her two young children, and figuring out her new life while letting go of the old one. Gillies talks frankly with The Daily Beast:
I was stunned at what I thought was your really generous attitude toward your ex-husband and the woman he had an affair with—now his wife. Could you talk about how you were able to forgive them?
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I didn’t write this book to be about revenge or make him or her into a devil, because I believe in strongly there’s no such thing as good guy/bad guy. And because I have children with him, I have a very strong interest in investigating why he’s not bad. Maybe he didn’t handle a particular part of his life very well, but I was married to him so clearly there are parts of him I dig. Plus, his wife puts sweaters on my kids. I really like her.
In your book, you have a scene with your former mother-in-law where you ask her what is wrong with her son and you accuse her of not knowing what you’re going through. Then she shares that her husband had once left her. Was that cathartic for you?
I’m glad you brought up that chapter. A lot of the time people think that this sort of thing happens only to them. And it actually happens to a bunch of people. Even in your own family. And when [the former mother-in-law] generously welcomed both me and my children into her house, I wanted to blame her for her son’s leaving me. And what she said to me was to be strong. She got through her own similar situation, and [knowing this] had this effect of “Buck up, live your life, move on.”
If you hadn’t met your second husband and fallen in love again, would the book’s tone have been different?
It’s hard for me to speculate, because I’m still so in love. You can’t be mad at your ex and happy about new love at the same time. It’s greedy. So, I fell in love, and I gave myself over to it. I’m sure people are like, “Well, if you were still single, I am sure you wouldn’t be so forgiving.” But, before I met Peter, my ex and I were on a road to figuring out how we were going to raise our children and be around each other.
You have a lot of humor in your book. Was that intentional?
My first book, Happens Every Day, is a much sadder book, because it’s about my ex-husband’s actual leaving me. There was this scene we were all at this brunch place, we were definitely going to get a divorce, our two kids were sick, and it was just a bummer scene. But then I ordered these pancakes that had Gruyère and asparagus in them and took a bite and said, “Holy shit, these are delicious.” I couldn’t stay in my misery. The pancakes were too good. Life is funny at the same time being totally harsh.
You have the knack for tragic comedy. Or comic tragedy.
I’ve always been the person at the table who is like, “I have this weird rash. Anybody else have this?” I remember once after my baby was born, I was at another person’s baby shower, and I said, “When I first had my son, I had this crazy feeling that something terrible was going to happen.” And people looked at me and were like, “How can you say that?”
What about writing about your parents? Was it hard?
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I can’t believe I’m on this path writing about people that are in my family. It must be hard for them. But I have a very good relationship with everyone I write about, so there’s nothing in the book that I wouldn’t say and discuss with them in person. There were some scenes in my book that I read aloud to my ex-husband and said, “Okay, I’m just going to read these to you, and let me know if you have a problem." At one point he said, “You end chapters really well.” And I’m thinking, “I just wrote about your mother.”
So what made you want to write about your life in the first place?
I didn’t think anything I wrote was going to get published. I’m a dyslexic kid who had tutors through college. But I had a very strong impulse to write. I dropped off my kids from 10 to 2, went to the library, and just wrote. This is my second career—I’m 41—and I’m a terrible speller.
You choose to include your miscarriage at the end of your book. Did you have misgivings about it, and how it might ruin your happy ending?
That’s sort of the point. Including the miscarriage was sort of my way of saying I didn’t want to wrap up this experience and the previous book with a Tiffany blue ribbon and my new husband. Bad stuff happens, and that’s life.
Isabel Gillies on Writing and Dyslexia
ArticlesAuthorsYoung AdultIsabel Gillies and admin Oct 21, 2014 0
You may know Isabel Gillies from her appearances on Law and Order: SVU as Detective Stabler’s wife, but this accomplished actress is also a writer. Gillies has written two memoirsand she made her YA debut earlier this year with Starry Night. Gillies’ protagonist, Wren, is dyslexic just like Gillies herself. Here, Gillies chats about how dyslexia has made her who she is today, and why the disorder makes for a particularly good protagonist.
Wren, the main character in my new book, Starry Night, is dyslexic. I gave her dyslexia because not only do I have dyslexia (I was in special help programs through college for it) but so do my son, my father, and one of my brothers. The Mannings have football, the Gillieses have dyslexia.
I’m not sure I can imagine writing a protagonist without dyslexia because it informs who I am to a large extent. And now that I have a child who is in the throes of dyslexia (the hardest time in a dyslexic’s life, in my non-scientific opinion, is between the years of 8-16) it surrounds us like bath water.
There are some things about dyslexia that naturally lend themselves to making an interesting character. First of all, you struggle. Struggling is a HUGE part of having dyslexia. When I was little, the academic part of school always felt like trying to get the top off of very stubborn jam jar. No matter how many ways I tried to open it (using a towel, banging the lid on the side of a counter, running the jar under hot water, asking someone stronger than me to help), it was always too hard. I constantly felt red-faced, straining and making crazy noises, struggling just to open the thing and get some darn jam. When you have dyslexia, you don’t struggle to understand text. You struggle to read it at all–it’s wildly frustrating. Anyway, you don’t want to have a main character who sails through life. There always has to be something to overcome, something to get through.
Another part of being dyslexic is that, for a big part of your life, you feel like a dumbass–and you’re not. It feels like everyone in your class didn’t just climb up the mountain, they sprang up happily, laughing about how much fun it was. You have to climb up with bare hands and weights on your feet, while balancing a glass on your head–or at least, that’s what it feels like. It stinks because sometimes you don’t even make it up the mountain! Everyone else in your class is at the summit having a picnic and you are stuck at the bottom eating grass and rocks. When you don’t make it up the mountain because you can’t spell and read, even though you would understand every last concept in the book if someone read it to you, you can’t help but feel dumb. And I believe that people think you are dumb, even if they have been told a million times that all people learn differently.
So as a writer, I like the idea of a really smart person feeling dumb. It’s fascinating to me, even if it’s painful. Pain can be good, because people learn from pain and become strong from it. I love, and I think everyone loves, a hero who finds strength in hardship.
Another juicy part about dyslexia that is good for a main character is, because your brain has trouble decoding, you have a hard time in some ways, but the other parts of your brain get very strong. For example, my son has an incredible ear for music. He can recall and sing a hymn he heard years before and only sang once. He is a great finder (as is my father). Anytime something is lost in the house, I ask him to help me find it, and usually in seconds he has. He has unusually high (if I do say so) emotional intelligence. When he listens to a book, like Huck Finn, he is moved by it, not just intellectually, but in his gut. He feels it. He can’t spell: were, where, won’t, weather, whether (and literally a million other words), but he weeps listening to Mark Twain. Wren is the same way. She can’t punctuate, but she can draw an owl so vividly, you feel as if you spotted it in the forest. (By the way, I just tried to spell forest three times and had to use spell check to get it right. I still can’t spell at all and often have to pick a new word to use because spell check doesn’t even work.)
I think in my next novel, I won’t write a main character with dyslexia. I should give myself that challenge, but in many ways I don’t want to. I don’t think I would have been able to survive the most difficult times in my life (like my divorce) without being dyslexic because dyslexic people learn how to overcome difficulty early. Dyslexia takes place in the brain, therefore you never grow out of it, but you learn how to deal with it. It stinks while you are young, but later on it comes in handy. It’s a part of myself I have grown to love. If I make my main characters (didn’t spell characters correctly either) dyslexic, I immediately feel love for them. It brings me closer to these made up people. I’m not a trained writer, and I truly question if I do it correctly all day long, but loving the hero in the book you are writing doesn’t feel like a dumbass move.
Isabel Gillies, known for her television role as Detective Stabler’s wife on Law and Order: Special Victims Unit and for her cinematic debut in the film Metropolitan, graduated from New York University with a BFA in film. She lives in Manhattan with her second husband, her two sons, and her stepdaughter.
'Happens Every Day' memoir puts Oberlin on the infidelity map
Print Email Karen R. Long, Special to The Plain Dealer By Karen R. Long, Special to The Plain Dealer
on March 29, 2009 at 12:46 PM, updated April 07, 2009 at 8:43 AM
Five years ago, when Manhattan actress Isabel Gillies landed in Oberlin, she hit upon selling $10 bunches of wildflowers at the farmers market as a way to meet people and introduce herself.
Jason McDonald/Simon & SchusterIsabel Gillies
She has everyone's attention now.
"Happens Every Day" is Gillies' new memoir about living in one of Oberlin's grandest brick homes, married to the handsomest professor - "He was Heathcliff with an earring" - only to have him unceremoniously dump her and their toddler sons for the new instructor in 18th-century English literature.
Starbucks has singled out Gillies' book to promote in its 7,000 stores, praising it as a story about "loving your life even when it's falling apart." Georgetown University critic Maureen Corrigan gave it a rave on National Public Radio, saying first she, then her husband, consumed it in a single sitting.
And Gillies, who plays a small recurring part on "Law and Order: Special Victims Unit" as Lt. Stabler's wife, scored four coveted minutes of national airtime Wednesday on the "Today" show, where she described her writing debut, started on her BlackBerry.
"Suddenly, it's the talk of the town," said Tom Oates, assistant manager of the Oberlin College bookstore. "They're selling very quickly."
Scribner, 261 pp., $25
Gillies, 39, has written a chatty, slightly goofy roman a clef, with the keys left under the mat for pretty much anyone living in Oberlin. She gives her ex-husband the name of Josiah Robinson on these pages, gushing that he "was like Indiana Jones. I always imagined that his students (male and female) might write 'I love you' on their eyelids and bat them at him during his class."
He is, in actuality, Oberlin's poetry professor, DeSales Harrison. Asked if he had read "Happens Every Day," in which he berates Gillies for a mess of Cheerios left under their boys' car seats, Harrison politely and promptly e-mailed, "I would love to help you with your story, but I have found that the best policy is to refrain from commenting. I hope you understand."
Gillies, who at age 14 posed on the cover of Seventeen magazine and says she twice dated Mick Jagger, describes herself, her ex and his new wife as all friends now.
"I always felt so insecure out there because I felt like the blond actress chick who was dragged along to the party by my smarty-pants husband," she said in a telephone interview from Manhattan. "But I was pretty. And I could be funny. . . And then I married a very, very smart person -- and I was surrounded by people with all these advanced degrees so I'd fall into this blond shtick."
Little DeSales and young Isabel sailed together as children near their families' summer homes in Maine; their adult romance ignited at his sister's wedding. They married, and moved to Oberlin with two cherubic, tow-headed boys, in time for Gillies to campaign for John Kerry.
The family sparked interest when it spent more than $300,000 for a stately house on Elm Street, a steal to the couple -- "we were both pretty big WASPs" -- but much more money than college regulars could remember a new English professor affording.
"We didn't just stay in our cushy, too expensive New York life with our friends, we went out like Earnest Shackleton on the Endurance and forged new territory," Gillies writes of moving to Ohio. "I was proud of us."
She did weep, however, because her sons seemed doomed to becoming Midwesterners, but perked up when she met the newly hired English instructor, "Sylvia" in print, but professor Laura Baudot in person.
"She wore all sorts of great designer clothes, which again I appreciated," Gillies writes. "In New York everybody looks great and is well dressed, but seeing someone in Ohio wearing Marc Jacobs is like spotting an owl in Central Park. Rare."
Gillies writes that her new buddy came up with the title of her memoir. On page 177, the author describes fearfully whispering her disbelief that a man might abandon his perfect little sons. "And then in her half-French accent Sylvia said the most dumbfounding thing, 'It happens every day.' "
No other woman reacted so coldly, Gillies writes. Baudot did not respond to requests for her side of the story.
Eventually, Baudot and Harrison married. Gillies moved back to New York and married a Wall Street Journal reporter. The boys are now age 7 and 4. Their mother said she doesn't expect them to read "Happens Every Day" now, but that openness is one of her signature traits.
"I've put my emotions, raw, out there, for national television," Gillies said. "I don't think this is so different. I don't think any one would bat an eye if I wrote a song."
She is not, however, planning a reading in Oberlin.
'Law & Order: SUV' star Isabel Gillies spills on divorce with Starbucks featured 'Happens Every Day'
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Isabel Gillies
Isabel Gillies (JASON MCDONALD)
Saturday, March 7, 2009, 11:46 PM
Nightmare No. 1: Your ex-wife writes a memoir about your affair and divorce. Nightmare No. 2: Starbucks selects the book as its next featured choice, sticking it in front of every one of its cash registers in the country.
Its happening to DeSales Harrison, who made the mistake of leaving "Law & Order: SVU" star Isabel Gillies for another woman. Gillies, the daughter of Archibald and Linda Gillies, has written "Happens Every Day." She provides a fictitious name for Harrison, a blue-blooded poetry professor who got a 9 out of 10 for "overall hotness" at Oberlin.
Gillies claims shes friends with Harrison now for the sake of their two little boys, and that she wrote the memoir to share what she learned about "loving your life even when its falling apart." But she describes her fury when "Josiah" suddenly hooks up with a younger Audrey Hepburn look-alike whos a philosophy professor, and yet wears Marc Jacobs. What would Kierkegaard say? Gillies writes:
"I was [so] angry and sad. . . . I couldnt even make the beds. . . . I briefly became an insane person." She asks "Josiah," "Do you hate me? Because youre killing me."
Gillies has moved on, marrying Wall Street Journal writer Peter Lattman. Harrison wouldnt comment.
Gillies, Isabel: HAPPENS EVERY DAY
Kirkus Reviews.
(Feb. 1, 2009):
COPYRIGHT 2009 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Gillies, Isabel HAPPENS EVERY DAY Scribner (Adult NONFICTION) $$25.00 Mar. 1, 2009 ISBN: 978-1-4391-1007-2
The author's debut memoir chronicles how her storybook marriage went belly up.
Best known for her recurring role on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, Gillies displays her flair for drama in print. She brings to life the town
of Oberlin, Ohio, complete with organic market, eccentric academics and insanely quaint coffee shops. The author also manages to squeeze
multiple cliffhangers out of one central incident: her husband Josiah, a poetry professor at Oberlin College, leaving her for a colleague named
Sylvia. The title is drawn from a conversation in which Gillies asked Sylvia how her husband could leave their two children. "Happens every
day," the Other Woman replied. Although readers know from the beginning that Josiah eventually moved in with Sylvia, it's unclear at the time of
this exchange if anything had happened between the two. It's also unclear whether the author was trying to provoke Sylvia into an admission with
this na™ve remark or was just plain clueless. It doesn't help Gillies' credibility that she's prone to sentences like, "I hate to say that, and
it's only a theory, but I think it's true." As to whether or not she actually had a perfect marriage whose only problem was the woman who broke it
up, readers will draw their own conclusions. Excruciating scenes--such as the one in which Josiah forces Gillies to apologize for yelling at Sylvia-
-suggest that there was more going on here than the author cares to tell--or perhaps ever realized.
Untidy but readable--a made-for-TV movie ready for casting.
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Gillies, Isabel: HAPPENS EVERY DAY." Kirkus Reviews, 1 Feb. 2009. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA192696348&it=r&asid=c383e9e303e4baaadcd5cc065bc2aea6. Accessed 27 June
2017.
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Gillies, Isabel: STARRY NIGHT
Kirkus Reviews.
(Aug. 1, 2014):
COPYRIGHT 2014 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Gillies, Isabel STARRY NIGHT Farrar, Straus and Giroux (Children's Fiction) $17.99 9, 2 ISBN: 978-0-374-30675-5
An actor and memoirist's debut novel for teens explores the exhilaration--and heartbreak--of passionate first love. Fifteen-year-old Wren attends a
life-changing party at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (her father is its director), where she connects with her older brother's new friend, the
charismatic, talented musician Nolan. Though they've just met, the two feel a magical connection and slip away to another dance party with
Nolan's friends, ruining Wren's borrowed designer gown and upsetting Wren's parents, who promptly ground her. Smitten Wren persists in seeing
Nolan, despite her parents' wishes. Gillies captures the impulsive nature of teen love and its consequences along with nicely detailed secondary
characters (little sister Dinah's a cutie with her own cooking show; Wren's parents draw sympathy with their real-time reactions to Wren's
relationship). Authentically depicted mother-daughter clashes allow readers to empathize with besotted Wren and outraged Nan--especially when
Wren abruptly abandons long-cherished dreams of attending an art program in France to be near Nolan. Occasionally, amateurish moments
disrupt (some dialogue sounds stilted; some transitions are announced at chapter beginnings). Still, readers willing to overlook such moments will
find themselves engaged by Wren and her headlong dash into love; the lack of tidy happy endings underscores the grittily real feeling of the
story's emotional affairs. An imperfect but authentic look at teen love and betrayal that will entertain and touch readers. (Fiction. 12-16)
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Gillies, Isabel: STARRY NIGHT." Kirkus Reviews, 1 Aug. 2014. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA376818189&it=r&asid=2b7867850e548450e877565a61c8b72c. Accessed 27 June
2017.
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Gillies, Isabel. Starry Night
Shanna Miles
Voice of Youth Advocates.
37.4 (Oct. 2014): p64.
COPYRIGHT 2014 E L Kurdyla Publishing LLC
http://www.voya.com
Full Text:
3Q * 2P * S
Gillies, Isabel. Starry Night. Farrar Straus Giroux/Macmillan, 2014. 336p. $17.99. 978-0-374-30675-5.
Wren is fifteen and everything is about to change because after one night, tonight, she will know what love is and nothing is like that first love.
But then, nothing is like that first heartbreak either. Nolan is mysterious, beautiful, and impossibly smart--a semi-famous, guitar-playing Bronx
Science student--and that night at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, standing in her mother's poppy-red Oscar de la Renta gown, Wren was the
star of her own fairy tale--except this one may not have such a happy ending.
A love story set in New York's Upper West Side, Starry Night follows Wren through her first heartbreak. Staying true to the romance formula, the
story glides along at an even pace, but it lacks the "danger" that Wren so eloquently describes in the first few paragraphs as being essential for
love. With a setting that has been overused and characters with no real obstacles to overcome, the story falls flat. Hardcore contemporary romance
lovers may pick it up while waiting for Sarah Dessen's new installment, but reluctantly.--Shanna Miles.
Miles, Shanna
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Miles, Shanna. "Gillies, Isabel. Starry Night." Voice of Youth Advocates, Oct. 2014, p. 64. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA387828223&it=r&asid=f171ce400371fdb439fd16ac40f39452. Accessed 27 June
2017.
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Gillies, Isabel: A YEAR AND SIX SECONDS
Kirkus Reviews.
(Apr. 15, 2011):
COPYRIGHT 2011 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Gillies, Isabel A YEAR AND SIX SECONDS Voice/Hyperion (Adult Nonfiction) $21.99 8, 2 ISBN: 978-1-4013-4162-6
Part two of Gillies' (Happens Every Day, 2009) chatty, bittersweet chronicle of loss and renewal.
"I had to get my shit together," writes the disillusioned author, who, in this memoir sequel, plods onward and incrementally upward after
separating from her husband in Ohio, taking her two sons and moving in with her parents in New York City. Separation agreement official and
wedding band removed (the area replaced with an angry rash), Gillies ruefully struggled with modern city life after picking up the pieces of a
shattered life once her husband Josiah left her to marry another woman. Her situation alternately cheerless and "exciting" (the dating scene!),
Gillies interviewed schools and babysitters, revived a recurring role on Law & Order and uncomfortably shared split vacations and custody with
Josiah for the sake of the boys. Romantically determined to rediscover that coveted "deep purple, electrifying, all-consuming and painful love,"
she blind dated via e-mail and tested an old friend's capacity for love. With the same self-effacing prose found in her debut, Gillies describes her
journey from the pain of lost love to the land of the living with humor and compassion. Too often, however, the self-described "drama queen"
waxes melodramatically, like she was the first and only survivor of a heart-wrenching divorce. Readers who enjoyed the author's earlier memoirand
books like it-will find her saga engrossing and heartfelt, though the writing remains scruffy and rambling. Gillies still wants love at first sight
(again), but one year later, will it still only take six seconds to happen? Readers will cheer along with the author, whose heart overflows in the
conclusion of this enduring story of life after love.
The writing is uneven, and the author strains for material in the final chapters, but there's plenty of love, humor and hope to spare.
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Gillies, Isabel: A YEAR AND SIX SECONDS." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Apr. 2011. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA256559418&it=r&asid=15012546cacc6e19a9394eb6c01a833d. Accessed 27 June
2017.
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Gillies, Isabel. Happens Every Day: An All-Too-True Story
Audrey Snowden
Library Journal.
134.2 (Feb. 1, 2009): p71.
COPYRIGHT 2009 Library Journals, LLC. A wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
http://www.libraryjournal.com/
Full Text:
* Gillies, Isabel. Happens Every Day: An All-Too-True Story. Scribner. Mar. 2009. c.224p. ISBN 978-1-4391-1007-2. $25. LIT
Every day, lovingly planned lives are ripped from unsuspecting partners and spouses by carelessness or by design. It's a story that can be told in a
thousand different ways. Gillies's chronicle of her family's move to a small college town for the benefit of her husband's career charms readers
before breaking their hearts when said husband leaves. By turns enlightening, funny, and gut-wrenching, this is a great read about one of the great
truths of life: you can't control what happens to you; you can only control how you react. Actress Gillies (Detective Stabler's wife on Law and
Order) has created an evenhanded account of a horribly difficult time in her life, which she has probed for meaning and mined for a great story. In
terms of compelling reading, Happens Every Day is the nonfiction equivalent of Nora Ephron's Heartburn. A tearjerker with a bittersweet yet
happy ending, this memoir is highly recommended for all libraries, especially for popular collections. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 11/1/08.]--Audrey
Snowden, Cleveland P.L.
Snowden, Audrey
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Snowden, Audrey. "Gillies, Isabel. Happens Every Day: An All-Too-True Story." Library Journal, 1 Feb. 2009, p. 71. General OneFile,
go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA199600226&it=r&asid=1b2bacc8bf5cc41702242696cc213a9f. Accessed 27 June
2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A199600226
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A Year and Six Seconds: A Love Story
Publishers Weekly.
258.23 (June 6, 2011): p35.
COPYRIGHT 2011 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
A Year and Six Seconds: A Love Story
Isabel Gillies. Hyperion Voice, $21.99 (256p) ISBN 978-1-4013-4162-6
In this polished though repetitive second work, actress and author Gillies (Happens Every Day) returns to her husband's leaving her and their two
small sons, only to find she's probably better off. Gillies--the former wife of an Oberlin College English professor who found a more sympathetic
connection with another woman in the department (names have been changed), even though the married couple had two small sons and a newly
renovated house in Oberlin, Ohio--exiles herself to New York City, moving back into the home of her parents on the Upper West Side. While they
are gracious and loving to the kids, Gillies, 35, doesn't want to be thrust back into the roll of the adolescent; she's angry and conflicted about her
traitorous husband; the china she requests him to send arrives smashed; she has to endure the ritual of divorce signing with her strangely blank
ex-husband; and she recognizes that her parents have other plans for their retirement. ("Mum, did I ruin your life?"). How to spend comfortable
time with her in-laws? Will she learn from her mistakes, falling for unsuitable guys who routinely dump her? Should her ex's new woman have
access to the kids? Gillies dispenses advice with a smarmy suavity that appears to have coated the rawness wrought by this senseless marital
rupture. (Aug.)
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"A Year and Six Seconds: A Love Story." Publishers Weekly, 6 June 2011, p. 35. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA258537692&it=r&asid=15d9e67aa3169d6cf09c48cb39b8fc35. Accessed 27 June
2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A258537692
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Starry Night
Publishers Weekly.
261.29 (July 21, 2014): p184.
COPYRIGHT 2014 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
Starry Night
Isabel Gillies. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, $17.99 (336p) ISBN 978-0-374-30675-5
Gillies's (Happens Every Day) first YA novel traces the rise and fall of a young artist's first love and how it changes her course. High school
sophomore Wren is eager to spend her junior year abroad, studying art in France at Saint-Remy, where Vincent van Gogh created The Starry
Night, her favorite masterpiece. But that's before a magical evening at a Metropolitan Museum of Art event orchestrated by her museum director
father. There, decked out in her mother's precious Oscar de la Renta gown, Wren is swept off her feet by a handsome young musician, who
appears to be just as enamored with her. Over the next few .weeks their feelings for each other intensify, making Wren lose sight of her dream of
going to France. The enchantment of the couple's first evening together outshines the rest of the novel, making subsequent conflicts, squabbles,
and betrayals anticlimactic by comparison. Still, Wren's rude awakening from her fairy-tale happiness will be felt deeply, alerting romantics to the
danger of losing oneself amid the dazzle of infatuation. Ages 12-up. Agent: Bill Clegg, William Morris Endeavor. (Sept.)
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Starry Night." Publishers Weekly, 21 July 2014, p. 184+. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA375948656&it=r&asid=d20f4a8a407fec6737d30bfc794cec55. Accessed 27 June
2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A375948656
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A Year and Six Seconds: A Love Story
Joanne Wilkinson
Booklist.
107.21 (July 1, 2011): p14.
COPYRIGHT 2011 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/ala/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist_publications/booklist/booklist.cfm
Full Text:
A Year and Six Seconds: A Love Story.
By Isabel Gillies.
Aug. 2011. 256p. Hyperion/Voice, $21.99
(9781401341626). 792.02.
Actress Gillies (Detective Stabler's wife on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit) picks up where she left off in her surprise best-seller, Happens
Every Day (2009). There she detailed the breakup of her marriage after her husband, a college professor, had an affair with (and later married) a
colleague. Here she relays in an intimate, conversational style the difficult year after the breakup, when she left the small, idyllic Ohio college
town in which she'd been living and moved with her two young sons back into her parents' Manhattan apartment. Depressed over the failed
marriage, humbled by her need for her parents' help at this stage in her life, and anxious about her future, she cries, forces herself to go on a series
of blind dates, and slowly begins to remake her life. She finds comfort in a close-knit circle of girlfriends and, with refreshing candor, takes a hard
look at her own part in the marital crack-up. When she finally finds love again, the reader rejoices in her hard-won happiness.--Joanne Wilkinson
Wilkinson, Joanne
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Wilkinson, Joanne. "A Year and Six Seconds: A Love Story." Booklist, 1 July 2011, p. 14. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA261950437&it=r&asid=eafcffb1909435d5da4ac30db2fbc039. Accessed 27 June
2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A261950437
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Starry Night
Diane Colson
Booklist.
111.1 (Sept. 1, 2014): p111.
COPYRIGHT 2014 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/ala/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist_publications/booklist/booklist.cfm
Full Text:
Starry Night. By Isabel Gillies. Sept. 2014. 336p. Farrar, $17.99 (9780374306755). Gr. 6-9.
Wren has had a close circle of friends since before she was born. Known as the Turtles, Wren and her four best friends were all conceived after
their mothers read Lady Chatterley's Lover for their book club. Wren has that blend of worldly knowledge and social naivete sometimes found in
children raised in wealthy Manhattan families. Her father is the director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Wren is a talented artist. At one
of the Met's extravagant fund-raisers, Wren meets Nolan, a boy free of parental restraints. Soon Wren is hopelessly in love, valuing her
relationship with Nolan even above her long-cherished dream of studying art in France. There is a lot of "telling" here; descriptions of
conversations, clothing, and background filler may slow some readers. Still, there is much to recommend about this touching story of first love,
betrayal, and friendship. Recommend to fans of Lauren Myracle's Eleven series. --Diane Colson
Colson, Diane
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Colson, Diane. "Starry Night." Booklist, 1 Sept. 2014, p. 111. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA382808586&it=r&asid=4d4222c1f22f6a74f05edb106d404189. Accessed 27 June
2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A382808586
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A Year and Six Seconds
California Bookwatch.
(Oct. 2011):
COPYRIGHT 2011 Midwest Book Review
http://www.midwestbookreview.com
Full Text:
A Year and Six Seconds
Isabel Gillies
Voice
c/o Hyperion Books
77 West 66th Street, New York, NY 10023-6298
9781401341626, $21.99, www.hyperionbooks.com
A Year and Six Seconds: A Love Story picks up where Isabel Gilles' HAPPENS EVERY DAY left off: with her penniless, jobless, and moving in
with her parents with her two young children after a seemingly-idyllic marriage ends. Her memoir shows how she recovered with the help of
friends and family, and how she evolved a relationship with her ex to help her kids adjust. Simply outstanding, this will find a place in any
general lending library and will offer much inspiration to women facing vast changes in their lives.
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"A Year and Six Seconds." California Bookwatch, Oct. 2011. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA270371574&it=r&asid=6d1d34a21a7b2db1e4309e56ce8768e3. Accessed 27 June
2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A270371574
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Happens Every Day
California Bookwatch.
(July 2009):
COPYRIGHT 2009 Midwest Book Review
http://www.midwestbookreview.com
Full Text:
Happens Every Day
Isabel Gillies
Scribner
1230 Avenue of Americas, New York NY 10020
1439110077, $25.00 www.simonandschuster.com
This memoir by Law & Order actress Isabel Gillies is a pick for any general lending library and tells of a woman with a wonderful life and home-
-until her husband suddenly leaves her and her young children. From that moment on Gillies had to forge a new life--and career--for herself, and
HAPPENS EVERY DAY charts her course and many life changes in an inspirational story.
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Happens Every Day." California Bookwatch, July 2009. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA206392955&it=r&asid=d52a68fa7c23b85164b743eeff67aa2d. Accessed 27 June
2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A206392955
BOOK REVIEWS
'Happens Every Day': A Marriage's Abrupt Ending
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March 17, 20094:42 PM ET
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MAUREEN CORRIGAN
Happens Every Day Cover
HAPPENS EVERY DAY: AN ALL-TOO-TRUE STORY
BY ISABEL GILLIES
HARDCOVER, 272 PAGES
SCRIBNER
LIST PRICE: $25
Read An Excerpt
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Author Isabel Gillies quit her acting career to move to Ohio with her two sons and academic husband.
Courtesy of Scribner
I swear to you, this really happened: Two weeks ago, I was sitting around on a Saturday night, just me and the dog. I didn't feel like reading any of the books I was supposed to be reading, so I began rooting through my pile of new review books. One slim volume caught my eye, initially, because of its title: Happens Every Day, a memoir by Isabel Gillies. "What happens every day?" I wondered. And, so I started reading. I couldn't put the book down and by the time my husband came home late that night from a business trip, I'd finished it. I grunted, "Welcome home," and went up to bed, drained.
The next morning over breakfast, my husband looked up from the newspapers and announced, "I finished a whole book last night."
"So did I!" I said. You see the punch line coming: He'd picked up Gillies' memoir from the table where I'd left it and he couldn't put it down either.
Maybe it's a bit ominous that we both were transfixed by this account of a marriage abruptly falling apart, although certainly we bonded all that morning by trying to figure out why Gillies' memoir is so disarming, especially given that she's not a writer. But therein lies her charm. When Gillies, for instance, starts reminiscing about the restored Victorian house she and her husband and her two little boys lived in in Ohio and then just gives up after a few sentences and says: "I will never be able to write how great it was," you smile. You're on her side.
That amateurish snort of frustration with words not only gives Gillies' story the ring of truth, but it also ironically conveys what a polished description might not: that this was one fantastic house! Similarly, as Gillies tackles her main subject — the sudden disintegration of her marriage — you feel, as a reader, as though you're sitting with a good friend over a pitcher of margaritas, listening to her, tearfully, digressively, even ditzily describe how her husband — whom she knew since they were both children spending summers on an island in Maine — turned into a pod person practically overnight. I'll fess up to the fact that Gillies' beauty — she was on the cover of Seventeen Magazine, and she had a couple of dates with Mick Jagger — adds a pinch of schadenfreude here for the rest of us mortals. Even beautiful people get dumped! And, it's a double bonus that this whole sad story takes place within the fenced-in groves of academe and that Gillies then-husband is a professor poet (think "Heathcliff with an earring," she tells us). It's always fascinating to read about academics acting on their ids rather than their intellects.
The gist of Gillies' tale is this: her husband, whom she calls here by the pseudonym "Josiah," wins the academic jackpot: a tenured teaching position at Oberlin College. (Gillies, by the way, offers very funny, outsider takes on the preciousness of artsy colleges like Oberlin, describing it as a school where all the students "play an instrument well" and "know how to address [transgendered people].") Gillies gave up her acting job in New York and the young family decamped to Ohio where, after a year, they bought that great house. Within one month of moving in, Josiah fell head over heels for a woman Gillies calls "Sylvia," the "new hire" in his department, a half-French, Audrey Hepburn look-alike whom Gillies had befriended. Another entrancing aspect of this painful story, as Gillies tells it, is that Josiah refuses to discuss his obvious infatuation with Sylvia. This is a man who's a poet, whose brilliant mind one friend likened to "a cathedral" and, yet, in this crucial situation where his marriage and family are at stake, he acts like 90 percent of the guys out there and won't talk about his feelings. Gillies, of course, desperately wants a story to explain why her life is upended. Finally, months after they separate, he calls Gillies and announces that he and Sylvia are, indeed, a couple.
I know we're only getting one side of the break-up here, but unless she's a much more manipulative writer than I'm giving her credit for, Gillies comes off as a genuinely peppy, uncomplicated woman. She even admits that she doesn't "really like poetry . . . [because she] just [doesn't] get it," which, obviously, might have created problems with Josiah the bard. For those readers who've endured similar seismic shifts of the heart, Happens Every Day will offer the comfort of solidarity. For the rest of us who've been, so far, spared, it makes for compulsive and, frankly, chilling late-night reading.
Excerpt: 'Happens Every Day'
ISABEL GILLIE
Happens Every Day
HAPPENS EVERY DAY: AN ALL-TOO-TRUE STORY
BY ISABEL GILLIES
HARDCOVER, 272 PAGES
SCRIBNER
LIST PRICE: $25
One late August afternoon in our new house in Oberlin, Ohio, my husband, Josiah, took it upon himself to wallpaper the bathroom with pictures of our family. Over the years, we had collected an enormous number of framed pictures. Some were generations old and really should be called photographs; like the one of Josiah's grandfather, a Daniel Day-Lewis-like, strong-looking man, sitting in profile on a porch, casually surrounded by all his family, including my father-in-law, Sherman, at age ten. I always thought that picture would have been a good album cover for a southern rock band like Lynyrd Skynyrd. There was one of my great-grandmothers looking beautiful, rich, and Bostonian on her wedding day in 1913. There was a picture of my mother sitting on stairs at Sarah Lawrence College in Jackie O sunglasses and pigtails. Numerous black-and-white pictures of various family dogs.
My grandparents on my mother's side always had somewhere between two and six black labs around at any given time. There were also two St. Bernards, one named McKinley and the one before that, Matterhorn. They lived in Croton, New York, on the Hudson River, on Quaker Ridge Road and belonged to that John Cheever group of eccentric intellectuals that had a little extra money, mostly from prior generations, and a lot of time on their hands. My grandparents and John Cheever used to write letters to each other in the voices of their Labradors. Seriously. My grandfather had the mother, Sadie ("one of the great Labradors," he would say in his Brahmin accent), and Mr. Cheever had the daughter, Cassiopeia. Dogs are important in my family. But in addition to dogs my grandparents also had a raccoon, Conney, who would sit on one's shoulder during drinks and beg for scotch-coated ice cubes; a toucan; a sheep named Elizabeth; and, for a short time, two lion cubs. It sounds like they were vets or they lived on a farm, or they were nuts, but really they just loved animals and birds. The house that my mother grew up in was big and white with lots of lawn. They had a mimeograph in the living room that my grandmother Mimi knew how to operate and, as a family, they created The Quaker Ridge Bugle, which was later printed as a little local paper. My grandmother was an artist. She mainly painted and drew birds. My brother Andrew and I now have them on our walls. I remember her as very beautiful but thin. She wore long braids and black socks with sandals. She and my grandfather, who was a photographer among other things, lived in Guatemala later in their life, so I remember her shrouded in lots of brightly colored striped ponchos. In her day, though, she looked like a fey Katharine Hepburn. Like my grandfather, she was from a nice old American family. She was an odd bird. She was an intellectual, a good writer of letters, and also was probably one of the first anorexics. She rebelled against her aristocratic, proper upbringing as much as she could by becoming an artist and leading a somewhat alternative life filled with books and chaos. She spent many hours in her studio alone, away from her children, whom she didn't really know what to do with. My mother, the eldest, ended up running the show a bit, which is probably why she is such an organizational dynamo now. "It sounds a little looney, and it was," my mother says.
Among the pictures Josiah hung on the bathroom wall was one of my father shaking hands at an Upper West Side street fair when he ran for New York City Council in 1977. He didn't win the election, but my memory of that is not as strong as my memory of his photograph plastered on the front of the Eighty-sixth Street crosstown bus that I took to school. I'll never forget the image of my father bounding toward me, his hand strongly gesturing forward, as I got out my bus pass. ARCH GILLIES CITY COUNCIL AT LARGE. I thought he should have won. As far as I am concerned my father really should have been the president of the United States. He can see the big picture and he is fair. His grandparents were Scottish immigrants. His parents were of modest means but made a sturdy, dependable, nice life for their only son in Port Washington, Long Island. My grandfather was in the navy, and by hook or by crook, having never gone to college, he made his way up the ranks to rear admiral. When he found himself surrounded by other high-ranking officers he learned that they had all gone to something called boarding school. So he came home on leave one day and told my grandmother that they would only have one child, my father, and he would go to school at a place called Choate, a school in Connecticut where a colleague had gone. So my father, who thought he would do what all his other friends did, work at La Guardia Airport, was sent to Choate, which led him on a very successful path. His life took a different turn. He went on to Princeton, where he was on the student council and president of all the eating clubs. He helped change their policies so that all students were eligible to join the eating clubs. He has run things ever since. My parents met on Rockefeller's 1968 presidential campaign. He was the finance director and my mother was the office manager. At the end of the long days they would have a drink in the office together. "I had the scotch and she had the rocks," he would say as he gave my mother a wink.
Also among the sea of photographs was a snapshot of Josiah and his brother, ages four and five, leaning against their father, who was driving somewhere in the South — not a seat belt on anyone. There was another of Josiah's mother, Julia, holding hands with her husband, John, Josiah's stepfather, whose other hand was linked in a chain with four children. One of the children was an eight-year-old Josiah. They were walking across a lawn in Palm Beach in crisp white shorts and brightly colored Izods. Everybody matched.
There were old framed Christmas cards from both of our families — lots of gangly, long-haired boy and girl teenagers standing in front of various mountains in Georgia and on rocky beaches in Dark Harbor, Maine. Both of us have parents who had been married more than once, so we both have an array of step and half and real siblings that we love very much. The titles that came before the word brother or sister never mattered much.
There was a black-and-white picture of my girlfriends from high school at a Grateful Dead show in Providence, Rhode Island. The slightly curved picture in the frame gave away the fact that I had developed it myself in a photography class at RISD. And there was one of Josiah in a crew shell at his boarding school looking focused. Josiah often made fun of the fact that he was positioned in the middle of the boat to serve as weight, the "meat," rather than being placed in the front as the coxswain, the "brains" of the boat, who navigates the race. Out of the eight rowers, though, Josiah was the one who stood out. When someone in the picture looks like Adonis, it's hard not to notice.
There was a large silver framed picture of me and Josiah walking down the aisle on our wedding day. We got married at Christmastime. I wanted the wedding to feel like a New York Christmas party, so there were paperwhites everywhere. We ate chicken potpie and coconut cake. And then there were many, many photographs of our three boys. Josiah had a son, Ian, from his first marriage, whom I met when he was three. Ian lives in Texas with his mother and is the spitting image of Josiah, dark curly hair and almond eyes that remind me of a sparrow. My favorite picture of him is in black and white and was taken on a pristine beach in the South. It's almost annoying it's so beautiful, but he is wearing a T-shirt with a fierce shark on it that makes the whole thing palatable. Josiah and I have two boys, Wallace, age three on the day that Josiah was bathroom decorating, and James, who was sixteen months old. Both names were in our family trees, but Wallace we came to because we were watching Braveheart while I was pregnant. Like I said, I am Scottish. The boys are fair, their coloring more like mine. Josiah is dark. I think of Wallace as the sun: bright, vibrant, and warm and James as the moon: round, steady, and funny. James even likes colder baths. Wallace, like me, wants to be scalded.
We had been hauling all these pictures around with us in boxes. One reason for that was because Josiah was an English professor and we had moved from one college town to another for a number of years. The other was because we were both pretty big WASPs and in our worlds it was looked down upon to have too many beautiful pictures of one's own family ostentatiously displayed in frames around the house. My mother said it was okay to have small framed pictures on your personal desk (she gets everything printed in 3 x 5), but anything more than that was showy and, as she would say, "too much." I always felt sort of sad about this, that there wasn't more evidence of our happy family around for people to see — but I never questioned it. Most of the advice and direction my mother gives I take, but there are a few things I have thrown in the garbage. The picture thing I followed like a good girl, but my mother also thinks cars should be spotless; I like mine to look like my purse. She has shoe polish in brown, black, cordovan, and white and all the brushes and flannels to use them. I have never bought a can in my life. Josiah felt the same way as my mother did about framed pictures. He thought it was embarrassing and silly to take up space with big goopy silver frames filled with frozen happiness, so that he did what he did in the bathroom was mind-blowing.
I am from New York and Josiah is from Florida, where his mother and stepfather lived, and Georgia, where his father and stepmother lived. And although he feels like a northeastern guy, mostly because he went to boarding school in New England at age thirteen, actually he is 100 percent southern.
We were living in Oberlin, Ohio, because Josiah was teaching poetry at the college. Oberlin is a funky, tiny, political, young hot spot in the middle of northeast Ohio that vibed New York City to me a lot because most of the students who went to Oberlin College were from the East Coast if not New York City itself. But it was in Ohio — and it was rural and it was minuscule. A faculty member said that in the summer, when the students were gone, it felt like living in Central Park with no people — and that was kind of right. For the record, I absolutely loved it.
We had gotten the job (in academics you end up saying "we" even if it actually isn't "we," because you move around so much together from job to job that one person slowly loses his or her identity) right after I gave birth in Cambridge, Massachusetts, to our son James Thacher. Because of our chaotic life with a two-year-old, a newborn, a dog, and two cats, I ended up not going out to Ohio to check it out before we moved. I had faith in my dream of a bucolic, happy, secure, academic life. It's a great, great dream if you have it in your head right. Here's what was in my head. I had married a very good-looking (think Gregory Peck), brilliant (most people hate the word brilliant to describe a person, but I frankly can't think of any other word to do it — at our wedding Josiah's best friend described his brain as a cathedral) childhood friend that I had re-met at his sister's wedding in Maine. As six- and seven-year-olds we had sailed in little bathtub boats on the Penobscot Bay together, but at the time of his sister's wedding he was getting his Ph.D. in poetry at Harvard and I was being a New York girl in New York. I had not seen him in fifteen years. He was Heathcliff with an earring. It sounds romantic to be married to an actual poetry scholar, but truthfully he never recited poetry to me much or wrote me a poem. It's hard to admit, but I don't really like poetry or jazz. I just don't get it a lot of the time. If someone (and Josiah once in a blue moon would do this) teaches me through every line of a poem I can get it, but it's rare that it hits me in the gut the way a Rolling Stones song does, or the unfinished Pietà that I saw in Florence when I was fifteen. Right at the start of our love affair he did give me one of the only poems I do recognize as sublime, a John Ashbery poem called "At North Farm."
We fell in love in two hours at that wedding on a rare night so foggy it felt like when I was a girl in the 1970s, when it seemed to be foggy all summer. Maine has lost a lot of its fog.
From HAPPENS EVERY DAY by Isabel Gillies. Copyright © 2009 by Isabel Gillies. Reprinted by permission of Scribner, an Imprint of Simon & Schuster, Inc, NY.
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Happens Every Day by Isabel Gillies
27 of 49
Happens Every Day
By Isabel Gillies
272 pages; Scribner
Josiah Robinson (not his real name) falls in love with Isabel Gillies (her real name) when he is 7. Fifteen years later, they remeet. This time Isabel reciprocates. Josiah, a beautiful poet ("Heathcliff with an earring"), says: "I will call you at 2:30 and if you aren't there I'll try every minute after until you are." Reader, she marries him. She abandons her New York acting career and follows him to a teaching post in Ohio.
"I missed any signs of trouble," Isabel writes in Happens Every Day: An All-Too-True Story. The reader won't. Isabel throws Josiah into her new best friend Sylvia's path over and over. She makes the thing happen she is most afraid of happening.
If Gillies weren't so plucky, she would break your heart. When the blow comes, it's her sons she is most devastated for. They are blessed to have her kind of love. It's the same kind of love Isabel got growing up, mother-lode mother love.
"I am not a writer, but I have been told I write good e-mails," Gillies says. I bet.
Read more: http://www.oprah.com/book/happens-every-day-by-isabel-gillies#ixzz4lFzt5wtH