Falling

In this quiet, compulsively readable memoir, former Esquire and New York magazine writer Taylor dissects the recent painful disintegration of his marriage. He describes one of his first premonitions, the virtual epidemic of divorce in his neighborhood, which ''struck like some form of natural disaster, leveling one house while leaving the next intact.'' Although he spends a number of pages probing the big picture — society's approach to marriage and divorce — he focuses on the small, telling details, the myriad ways in which the bonds of his own 11-year marriage tangled and frayed. Taylor is frank about his failings as a husband, making this sparsely written narrative as believable as it is heartbreaking. A-