Neil Connelly



Winner of the Molly Ivors Prize

 "The coolest part of the book is that just as I'm most amused, I get whipsawed with the sadness that's flowing underneath. The Pocket Guide to Divorce is simultaneously one of the funniest and most moving books I've read in the last ten years."

         --John Warner, author of Funny Man, editor of McSweeney's Internet Tendencies

“The Pocket  Guide to Divorce  is as touching as it is hilarious, an ode to the resilience of the human heart. It’s a hopeful, quirkily funny blueprint for rebuilding one’s own spirit.”

      --George Makana Clark, author of The Raw Man

In the wake of a cataclysmic divorce, Mitchell Higby’s doing great!  Really, he’s awesome, coping so wonderfully in fact that he’s taken to writing a guidebook for others, so they can be as upbeat and positive as him.  But as he leads readers through self-improvement exercises and doles out advice on everything from the Food Pyramid to dating, glimpses of a deeper truth begin to emerge.  Gradually, the real facts behind Mitchell’s divorce, and the reality of his current state of mind, take over the manuscript. Before Mitchell can help anybody, he may have to save himself.



"By turns hilarious and heartbreaking, The Pocket Guide to Divorce is an ache arranged as a novel, a coyote’s cry captured on the page. It’s been a long time since a novel has made me laugh and wince and cry, page after page after page. Here’s to The Pocket Guide, with its hard-won wisdom, for being such a book."

      --Todd James Pierce, author of Newsworld, winner of the Drue Heinz Prize