In The Year of the End, Anne Theroux tells the story of the final breaths of a marriage that lasted 22 years.

By revisiting diary entries for that last year with hindsight, she was able to expand on and contextualise events that, at the time, might have been to immediate and painful to comprehend fully.

A moving autobiography, in which the author explores notions of truth, fiction, memory and subjectivity in order to make sense of the end of her relationship, and of her identity not as wife and mother, but as herself.

Anne Theroux is a thoughtful writer and, with the added benefit of over two decades of hindsight, she allows us candid access to her diary she kept in the year that her marriage ended. Theroux supplements her original diary with reflections added at several later points in time. In so doing she offers a more complete picture of her life, career, relationship and family as she confronts how her role in each changed as a result of the separation. Theroux's immersion in literary culture, both due to her own career and in light of her husband's success as an author, adds one further layer of interest. Overall, Anne wonderfully captures the absence of a black-and-white narrative to her divorce and the complicated dissonance of true, long-term love. The affection she shows for her sons is touching, and the way she talks about her in-laws is charming. There are many moments in the diary where Theroux remembers, and sometimes refutes, moments from her family life that her husband had fictionalised over the years. I have never read any of Paul Theroux's work so can't comment specifically here, but I will say that - to me - the diary didn't really read as a response to anybody, but more as an independent memoir.

Being given access to someone’s diary is a real privilege. When that person has lived an interesting life of travel and books, through turbulent times, this is a treat. Breezy and bright, despite the trauma of a relationship breakdown, this is a glimpse within, a snapshot in time .

Telling as to the ‘role’ of women through the seventies and eighties. Anne Theroux weaves a tapestry of a specific time that tells a wider story; of marriage, motherhood and the impact of the world around.