This article contains spoilers for all three versions of The War of the Roses .

In a New York Times review of Warren Adler’s 1981 novel The War of the Roses , novelist Avery Corman argued that the book’s main characters, Jonathan and Barbara Rose, are so awful they are—to put it in modern parlance— unrelatable . “Why should we care about the Roses? Their actions are so special, they are both so cruel to each other, to their children, we start to back away from them,” Corman, himself the author of Kramer vs. Kramer , the 1977 novel about another divorcing couple, wrote. “ The War of the Roses , which began with universals, turns into a novel only about the Roses, about two driven, immature people.”

It’s true— The War of the Roses , which has now been reissued on the occasi

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