Jennifer Wright's 'It Ended Badly': Good topic, fair execution

It Ended Badly

13 of the Worst Breakups in History

By Jennifer Wright

Holt. 240 pp. $21 nolead ends

nolead begins

By Dawn Fallik

nolead ends Breaking up is sad business. But It Ended Badly, an odd but intriguing book, suggests that instead of eating carbs, sleeping around, or running to a nunnery, today's castoffs should feel grateful they haven't been beheaded, jailed, or stabbed in the heart with a penknife.

Badly takes on epic, historic sunderings, from Nero and Poppaea to Debbie Reynolds and Eddie Fisher and Elizabeth Taylor. If you're not familiar with Poppaea or Anna Ivanova (daughter of Russian Czar Ivan the Ignorant), don't worry. Wright does a lot of explaining in her attempt at history mixed with Bridget Jonesesque humor.

When not describing the love story and tragic consequences of playwright Oscar Wilde and Lord Alfred Douglas, Wright writes in a style something like the "To Do This Weekend" column in the New York Observer: "I cannot stress the extent to which you should go to Sir Ivan's Royal Tea Dance. If you don't, you're going to miss telling stories for years afterward, like about how I once saw a woman dance naked while wearing dragon wings in a fountain."

Readers who cringe at that kind of millennial self-referential, stream-of-consciousness writing style won't get past the first few pages of It Ended Badly. Sure, the chapter might be about Norman Mailer and Adele Morales Mailer, but Wright interjects frequently, usually with the words I or my. She enjoys old movies, good food, and wine with friends, FYI. Sometimes it's funny. Often, she comes across as that friend who thinks everything she says is hilarious, when not so much. Less would be more here.

What's frustrating is that there are interesting stories to be told, if only Wright would get out of her own way. She has obviously done the research. Who knew Henry VIII was being kind when he ordered Anne Boleyn beheaded with a sword instead of an ax? Or that when Caroline Lamb asked for a lock of Lord Byron's hair, he sent her one from his current lover?

In her epilogue, Wright wants readers to know that she may be writing a book about bad breakups, but she still believes in love. Though It Ended Badly is not anyone's idea of an actually helpful breakup book, it could be a quick, interesting read on a dreary Saturday afternoon. At least readers know from the start there isn't a happy ending.

Dawn Fallik is a former Inquirer staff writer and an assistant professor of journalism at the University of Delaware.