No Fault

A Memoir of Romance and Divorce

By: Haley Mlotek

Narrated by: Haley Mlotek

A Vogue & Vulture Best Book of the Year (So Far)

“Enigmatic, opalescent, so precise.”—Jia Tolentino

“An investigation, an invocation, a mood.”—Becca Rothfeld, The Washington Post

“A personal accounting of heartache. . . . Mlotek’s writing reaches toward—and actually meets—poetry.”—Alissa Bennett, The New York Times Book Review

“A cool appraisal of millennial divorce.”—Emma Alpern, Vulture

An intimate and candid account of one of the most romantic and revolutionary of relationships: divorce

Divorce was everything for Haley Mlotek. As a child, she listened to her twice-divorced grandmother tell stories about her “husbands.” As a pre-teen, she answered the phones for her mother’s mediation and marriage counseling practice and typed out the paperwork for couples in the process of leaving each other. She grew up with the sense that divorce was an outcome to both resist and desire, an ordeal that promised something better on the other side of something bad. But when she herself went on to marry—and then divorce—the man she had been with for twelve years, suddenly, she had to reconsider her generation’s inherited understanding of the institution.

Deftly combining her personal story with wry, searching social and literary exploration, No Fault is a deeply felt and radiant account of 21st century divorce—the remarkably common and seemingly singular experience, and what it reveals about our society and our desires for family, love, and friendship. Mlotek asks profound questions about what divorce should be, who it is for, and why the institution of marriage maintains its power, all while charting a poignant and cathartic journey away from her own marriage towards an unknown future.

Brilliant, funny, and unflinchingly honest, No Fault is a kaleidoscopic look at marriage, secrets, ambitions, and what it means to love and live with uncertainty, betrayal, and hope.

©2025 Haley Mlotek (P)2025 Penguin Audio

Critic reviews

“Marriage might be archaic and sexist, but Mlotek takes care to show how it is also a deeply intimate union, one that is difficult to study without looking inward. This is an insightful, tender exploration of the desires that draws people together—and the rifts that push them apart.”—Vulture’s “30 Books We Can’t Wait to Read in 2025”

“An investigation, an invocation, a mood . . . No Fault is a ferment of ideas and references—it contains sharp forays into the history of divorce and shrewd readings of books like Phyllis Rose’s Parallel Lives: Five Victorian Marriages — but its true innovation is formal. The divorce it memorializes is both personal and narrative: Mlotek leaves the comforts of her marriage in search of chaos, and her story strays from the neat staple of sequence in search of stranger surprises.”—Becca Rothfeld, The Washington Post

“Mlotek’s treatment of divorce is measured, a bit opaque, and resolutely abstract. . . . No Fault enacts its own quiet backlash against a zero-sum outlook on divorce.”—Molly Fischer, The New Yorker

A MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK OF 2025: Vogue, Vulture, Harper’s Bazaar, W, Bustle, Lit Hub, The Millions

When we are divorced, it is still happening.

I like how she wove in sociological studies/facts into her own story, even including specific feelings when she had an open marriage, which helped me live vicariously, allowing me to guess how I might feel if I were her. She is an engaging writer and the last paragraph is a strong conclusion that I agree with - that for those of us who are divorced, we have known our self best by having been married and the memories about that are still happening and maybe always will. And that it just is. Comforting in a non-fake happy ending way.

Probably better to read in physical form

I appreciated the information in this book. Though, I didn’t like all the details given about specific movies. I think I was expecting something different. Overall, this account of divorce “reads” like a performance or explanation rather than a brutally honest memoir. Still an ok listen!