Reviewed by Rudri Bhatt Patel
Well-written nonfiction almost always makes readers feel uncomfortable. Jealousy: A Memoir (Catapult; Nov. 2026) by Sarah Haas blends lyrical prose, philosophical musings, and cerebral references as she confronts her jealousy of her husband’s ex-partner. Witnessing her obsessions, there is a hope that Haas will shift attention to something other than what her now husband shared with his ex-partner.
Because of Haas’ cerebral tone, it feels like we are rubbernecking on intimate spaces and thoughts. This is precisely where the reader senses a palpable discomfort. This pushes us to question what we are reading, questioning whether the jealousy that Haas excavates deems her an unreliable narrator. It also puts us at a lengthy distance from Haas; perhaps because she is also detaching from herself.
Haas, in a recent interview with the radio station KQED, admits that:
“I studied her, and I Googled her, and I did all the things you can do on the internet to find out about a person. And she became somebody who was always with me and who was standing against me. She was a threat to what I had.”
That threat leads Haas to take action. Because social media is its own maze, Haas creates another alias identity so that she can study “her.” She writes:
“I spend the rest of the afternoon cropping and then saving and then organizing the screenshots in a folder I entitle “Her,” every copy becoming a layer cake of visitations — of history (hers) and imagination (mine).”
Haas, in an effort to become “her,” entertains leg-shortening surgery and predictably passes on this option since it’s too expensive. Instead, she “reinvents” herself by copying her “muse” — dressing in pinstripes, coloring her brown hair blonde, wearing glasses and a hat. When she greets her then boyfriend, now husband, she realizes she’s blurring the lines. She writes:
“Whatever bor-der I’d established between perversity and pleasure is thin-ning as I feel something like joy in being loved for pretending to be someone else.”
The reader may be tempted to think this is a linear storyline where girl-meets-boy and new girl can’t get past her jealousy of old girl. But Haas is writing much more than a jealousy trope. She has the ability to add philosophical “truths” that add a different dimension to the narrative. One liners like “Beginnings and endings are made of the same absurdity as the ongoing now, but no one can hold on to that,” or “Every first date is also a loss: our ideas of each other won’t survive it.”
These Haas musings are scattered throughout her memoir. As I read these flickers of wisdom, it pushed me to think about larger existential questions. How do I view jealousy? Have I invented narratives about another because I coveted a certain something that someone else has? Where is the line between jealousy and envy? And can jealousy be productive?
Haas has the ability to switch subjects effortlessly. Within a span of a few pages, she moves from writing about sex to color theory to a Susan Sontag quote. Her memoir requires the reader to pay attention, pause and reflect. Her reflections required me to think about larger assumptions I’ve made regarding relationships, jealousy and reconciling what I know about a person’s past and their present. Haas seems to come to a point of reckoning when she can’t believe her current partner actually chooses her over the ex. She wants to excavate the why of her partner’s relationship with his ex, instead of focusing on the two of them. Haas understands she’s pushing him to the brink. And proclaims, “Eventually it will burst. Eventually he will leave me, but when?”
This current uncertainty is what leads Haas to create this mythology about who “her” is even though she admittedly never met her partner’s ex in person. The feeling of jealousy is unhinged as Haas picks up her partner’s old phone and scrolls through message after message to learn about his relationship with the ex. Haas makes the ex a party to the relationship, but the reality is her partner chose to marry her. But that’s not enough. Jealousy will not let go. Partially because Haas won’t let it.
It’s this not letting go of a mythology she’s created that brings her to contemplate suicide. But Haas realizes her suicide would only drive her partner back to the ex. That is unreasonable and unfathomable through her lens. It’s this single-minded obsession that makes me think how many of us are subsumed with a jealousy that we don’t understand but we still let that undercurrent call the shots. The truth is her then boyfriend, now husband, picked Haas. And this isn’t a spoiler. It’s that Haas still can’t let go of the jealousy. She writes:
“Jealousy is jealousy. But that’s not an ending, because an end cannot only preserve, it must also further. I’m trying to develop an interest in what’s left.”
I think that’s what we all must consider. Perhaps we aren’t all tormented by the jealousy that Haas faced and faces, but we’ve all let streaks of jealousy color relationships and decisions. It’s what is left where the real meaning resides. If we are able to live with the discomfort in the in-between, we may be able to find what matters.
Rudri Bhatt Patel is a former lawyer turned writer, editor, and educator. She is the co-founder and co-editor of the nonprofit literary journal, The Sunlight Press. With more than two decades of editorial experience, Rudri is a freelance writer and teaches classes through Writers.com. Her work appears in numerous outlets, including The Washington Post, Forbes, Business Insider, Saveur, The Lily, Electric Literature, Civil Eats, JSTOR Daily, Eater, and elsewhere.
