The Memoir Emmy Rossum Thinks Everyone Should Read This Summer

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Divorce memoirs are kind of having a moment. Right now, everyone's talking about Belle Burden's "Strangers: A Memoir of a Marriage," but the publishing industry has set loose tons of books about broken marriages in the 2020s. In fact, the one Emmy Rossum named the best summer biography came out all the way back in 2023.

In a July 2026 Instagram post from The Ankler titled "9 Biographies That Make Perfect Summer Reads," according to influential figures, Rossum praised "We Are Too Many: A Memoir [Kind Of]" by Hannah Pittard. "This is an incredibly human and very funny, genre-bending book about a woman's marriage ending after she discovers that her best friend and her husband have betrayed her," Rossum said. It's certainly a departure from the Colin Powell biography recommended by the Governor of Maryland.

It's also a description that only hints at what makes "We Are Too Many" so interesting. The book consists mostly of transcribed, reconstructed, and imagined conversations regarding the dissolution of the author's marriage, presented in script format complete with stage directions. It's a form that divided critics and readers, but according to the "Shameless" actor, it's a controversial book that's worth your time.

Something else that makes "We Are Too Many" interesting is that it's just one part of a bigger story. Of course, there's more than one side to every breakup, but both Andrew Ewell, Pittard's ex-husband, and Anna Shearer, her former best friend and ex-husband's now-wife (got all that?), are also writers. As writers are wont to do, they've also put their perspective on paper.

In a series of events that took New York Magazine more than 10,000 words to sort out, Ewell published a novel partly about his marriage to Pittard and affair with Shearer, "Set For Life," around the same time as "We Are Too Many." This inspired Pittard to write "If You Love It, Let It Kill You," about a writer who discovers her ex-husband has written a novel about her. (Shearer also wrote a novel about the breakdown of her own marriage, but it hasn't been published.)

As a bonus, Pittard also admitted that she realized partway through writing "Listen to Me," a novel about a couple on a tense road trip that she wrote while she and Ewell were still married, that it was actually about their marriage as well. What it all comes down to is that, if you enjoy "We Are Too Many," the ride doesn't have to end. There's plenty more where that came from.