Ex-Wife's Novel Details Taylor's Marital Breakup

Book-jacket fodder that could alone put a novel on the bestseller list is curiously absent from Kathryn Walker’s debut, A Stopover in Venice, Celia McGee notes in the New York Times—though it’s a fictional account of her unhappy marriage to James Taylor. The musician comes in for a “not very flattering” portrait, McGee writes, as does first ex-wife Carly Simon.

In addition to Taylor, actor Jason Robards and National Lampoon founder Douglas Kenney (an ex-boyfriend of Walker’s) directly inspire characters in the novel—parallels that have been lost on pre-publication reviewers. Walker’s agent says the low-profile marketing strategy was deliberate, so that she can “be seen as a serious writer, not as the author of an autobiographical novel about her famous ex-husband.” (More Kathryn Walker stories.)