Product Description

Joe and Joan Castleman are on route to Helsinki, Joe is thinking about the prestigious literary prize he will receive and Joan is plotting how to leave him. Their marriage has been careering towards this moment, Joe's chance to bask in the glory of a life dedicated to letters and Joan's final appearance as his adoring wife. For too long Joan has played the role of supportive wife, turning a blind eye to his misdemeanours, subjugating her own talents and quietly being the keystone of his success. The Wife is an acerbic and astonishing take on a marriage from its public face to the private world behind closed doors. Wolitzer has masterfully created an expose of lives lived in partnership and the truth that behind the compromises, dedication and promise inherent in marriage there so often lies a secret underpinning it all.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #75236 in Books
• Published on: 2004-08-05
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 328 pages

Review
'A triumph of tone and observation, The Wife is a blithe, brilliant take on sexual politics and literary vanity...It is the most engaging, funny and satisfying novel the witty Meg Wolitzer has yet written' Lorrie Moore 'An astonishingly dry, funny and gripping account of two writers trapped for life in an ever-more bizarre marriage...persuasive, hilarious and even frightening. The Wife is a milestone in the career of one of her generation's truest novelists' Adam Gopnik 'A rollicking, perfectly pitched triumph...Wolitzer's talent for comedy of manners reaches a heady high' Los Angeles Times 'Deploys a calm, seamless humor...Rage might be the signature emotion of the powerless, but in Wolitzer's hands, rage is also very funny' The New York Times Book Review

From the Publisher
A surprise bestseller in the US

'The Wife is a complex, compelling portrait of a marriage that raises painful issues, even as it has you howling with recognition. The Wife picks up some of the hard questions with the lightest, most glittering or touches’ Allison Pearson

About the Author
Meg Wolitzer lives in New York City with her husband and two sons.

Customer Reviews

Indulge yourself!
Entertaining and easy to read, this is a book to relax with and to enjoy. The blurb compares the author to "a tonic" who should be bottled; I couldn't agree more! I felt that in her company I'd visited a therapist to hammer out some of my hang-ups about life and men; and then gone on to indulge myself further in an evening of gossip with a good friend and a bottle of wine! If this sounds like chick-lit, it isn't - its so much MORE! You won't have to feel guilty about reading Meg Wolitzer, because her book is intelligent and profound. She writes perceptively and humourously, with a delicious enjoyment of language. Highly recommended.

Great book, bad cover
This is a really fantastic book but is totally let down by the cover. The publishers seem to have tried to make it look like a chick lit book when it's not. Which means that half the readers who would enjoy it will ignore it on the shelves. It's a serious read and beautifully written.

Auspicious beginning leads to predictable ending.
This novel's auspicious opening sentence, combined with other readers' hints of a surprise ending, tantalized me into ordering the book. However, as early as the first chapter I guessed the "secret" underlying the story but kept reading to the end just to see if I was right.

Joan Castleman is a disgruntled wife who provides a first person account of her 45 year marriage to Joe, a vain, self-satisfied, unfaithful man who happens to be a very successful author. The story opens with her decision to leave him while they are flying at 35,000 feet in the first class section of an airliner carrying them to Finland. Joe is about to receive the Helsinki Prize, the fictitious equivalent of the Nobel prize for literature. The next 200 pages is a literary autopsy of a defunct marriage. She remembers their decades together that began as an adulterous affair between a married college writing professor and his more talented student. The ensuing scandal caused her to drop out of school; he lost his teaching position, and they fled, nearly penniless to Greenwich Village.

Despite Joe's apparent lack of writing talent, after they marry he writes a novel, which is surprisingly well written and becomes a best seller. Over the years more literary sucesses follow, and the accolades make him more insufferable. As his celebrity grows, so does his appetite for other women. He is also a neglectful father. As Joan's resentful memories accumulate, you begin to wonder why this intelligent woman didn't leave him years before. Why did she trade her own writing ambitions to become a wife and mother? Has she really been satisfied basking in his reflected light? Did the women's liberation movement somehow bypass her? When Joe makes his acceptance speech for the Helsinki Prize he acknowledges Joan as his muse,saying "Without her, I am certan that I would not be standing up here tonight. I would instead be at home staring at a blank piece of paper." There's more to that statement than meets the eye, for she is much more than his muse. You come to realize that her apparent complacency over the years is actually complicity. Although the story is darkly humorous, at only 219 pages, it still feels too long. I think it would have had more dramatic impact as a short story.