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Title: The Wife: A Novel by Meg Wolitzer ISBN: 0-684-86940-3 Publisher: Scribner Pub. Date: 14 April, 2003 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $23.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.97 (38 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: a masterpiece!
Comment: The Wife is the best novel I have read in years. Witty, dry, searing, wise, the writing so fresh that a friend I recommended it to called me from the beach in Florida to read me a favorite line. I have read the book twice now, recommended it to countless friends and will be discussing it with my book group next week and can't wait. What I found so refreshing is Wolitzer's unflinching skewering of the literary world, those "men who own the world," the charming, voracious egos that devour women, soft cheese and single malt scotches in equal gulps. Though set mostly in an earlier day (the time in the book ranges from the 1950s to the present), I feel so much of the posturing and puffery is still true now. And the toll the marriage takes on the narrator's children rings painfully true -- never maudlin, just a matter-of-fact acknowledgement of how lies can worm their way through the most innocent hearts. As a fellow writer, reading The Wife felt a bit like a mischievous look at the writhing underbelly of a large and heavy rock -- the male literary tradition. A brave and brilliant book. And, for what it's worth, I was surprised by the ending.
Rating: 5
Summary: A Score Settled
Comment: The WIFE surely contains some of the most delectable prose to be seen in print in recent years; but it is not because of the wonderful writing that this novel demands a second reading. No, it is that the surprise ending of the book needs to spend its awesome power in order to set us free to thoroughly enjoy the subtext and underlying structures of the book; for these can only be seen and felt once we know how the novel ends. A second reading is just as delightful, and perhaps more rewarding, than the first one.
The book's layering of thought and emotion is so deftly rendered that on its surface it appears to be another in the genre that deals with the tensions between an older, prestigious, male and the younger pretty female dilettante, who in time becomes an acolyte to the man's talent; but all along we sense that under the surface there is much more than that, as, indeed, there certainly is. The author is an irrepressible humorist of the type that is funny especially when she is trying not to be. It is a book about the sweet and deadly revenge of the weak against an oppressor; it is a sociology about how a human relationship can evolve from symbiosis to parasitic exploitation, from sharing to taking to grabbing; and if Meg Wolitzer borrows some of the techniques of police novels, she rewards the reader by serving up the Holy Grail of detective books: a truly perfect crime. An extraordinary book that is likely to become a minor classic.
Rating: 4
Summary: A Surprisingly Perceptive Story
Comment: Stereotypes often make life easier to navigate. Upon second glance, however, they are inherently flawed. No one person fits the same mold as another. Yet in THE WIFE, a novel by Meg Wolitzer, readers buy into the stereotype of a young co-ed who falls in love with her accomplished writing instructor, marries him, has a family and lives a successful life. Buying into this myth, this picture-perfect scenario, readers trick themselves into believing that things are as they seem. What they discover, however, is exactly the opposite.
After reading the first few pages, readers understand that "happily ever after" is not part of this story. But most will not grasp the full extent of this one wife's reality until the very end of the story. It is a surprise ending that will startle the most intuitive readers.
Wolitzer proves herself a crafty and deft author with her ability to distract her reader from the core of this story: the real reason Joan stays married to a notorious womanizer and famous novelist by tempting him/her with tasty morsels, why she quit her job at a publishing house that launched his career and shelved the impressive writing talent that drew him to her in the first place. Joan, who speaks clearly to readers as the narrator, is a mildly embittered woman who has come to resent the very existence she created. As a freshman at Smith College, a published female author warned Joan, a promising creative writing student, about the fraternity of the publishing world and urged her to apply her talents elsewhere. Seemingly Joan took that advice. She raised three children and nurtured her husband's successful literary career. She attended literary events and research meetings, from interviews with prostitutes to tours of war-torn Vietnam. Joan details the intricacies of her life, her compromises both small and large, and at times the litany seems self-indulgent and repetitive. It is not until the end of the story when readers fully comprehend the depth of her sacrifice that her tirade seems justified, even perhaps understated.
On a larger scale the story will prompt readers to evaluate their own roles in relationships and question the exceptions they have made to their own rules. Because the hardcover edition of this book followed hot on the heels of THE SINGLE WIFE by Nina Solomon, I found myself contemplating the meaning of the word wife.
"I'd been a good wife, most of the time. Joe had been comfortable and safe and surrounded, always off somewhere talking, gesturing, doing unspeakable things with women, eating rich foods, drinking, reading, leaving books scattered around the house facedown, their spines broken from too much love," says Joan.
"Joe once told me he felt sorry for women, who only got husbands ... But wives, oh wives, when they weren't being bitter or melancholy or counting the beads on their abacus of disappointment, they could take care of you with delicate and effortless ease."
THE WIFE is a surprisingly perceptive story about a man and a woman whose union seems to allow them to live the lives they want. A strong undercurrent of this story is a message to women who avoid future disappointments by compromising in the short run. What readers learn from Joan is that, in retrospect, possible disappointments pale in comparison to those realized along the safer road.
--- Reviewed by Heather Grimshaw
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Title: Revenge of the Middle-Aged Woman by Elizabeth Buchan ISBN: 0670032069 Publisher: Viking Press Pub. Date: 10 February, 2003 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
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Title: Family History by Dani Shapiro ISBN: 0375415475 Publisher: Knopf Pub. Date: 01 April, 2003 List Price(USD): $23.00 |
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Title: The Amateur Marriage: A Novel by ANNE TYLER ISBN: 1400042070 Publisher: Knopf Pub. Date: 06 January, 2004 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
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Title: What Was She Thinking?: Notes on a Scandal: A Novel by Zoe Heller ISBN: 0805073337 Publisher: Henry Holt & Company, Inc. Pub. Date: 01 August, 2003 List Price(USD): $23.00 |
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Title: The Pursuit of Alice Thrift by ELINOR LIPMAN ISBN: 0679463135 Publisher: Random House Pub. Date: 17 June, 2003 List Price(USD): $23.95 |
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