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| The Wife: A Novel | 
| Author: Meg Wolitzer
Publisher: Scribner
Category: Book
List Price: $13.00
Buy Used: $0.01
You Save: $12.99 (100%)
New (52) Collectible (3) from $1.25
Avg. Customer Rating:  62 reviews
Sales Rank: 105715
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 224
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.5
Dimensions (in): 7.8 x 5.2 x 0.5
ISBN: 0743456661
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780743456661
ASIN: 0743456661
Publication Date: April 6, 2004
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Customer Reviews:
The hand you're dealt September 20, 2008
After reading the opening paragraphs of this book, I wondered why a friend had recommended it. It was about a woman who came of age in the 50s, and clearly it wouldn't resonate with one of the hippy/baby boomer persuasion. But I read on with faith in my friend and was rewarded. Yes it is "dated" in some ways (although published recently---2003) since it predates "the pill" and the choice it gave women to plan their childrearing. But there are plenty of biological and political realities here that still ring true.
The book is humorous, though on the cynical side. But the "wife's" decision at the end of the book transcends cynicism. She chose the relationship, and she bought into the compromises it entailed. She recognized early on that her being recognized as a writer was probably not likely, given the sexual politics of the time. So she plays the dutiful wife to the end.
She captures the flavor of slightly desperate and fed up with putting up. September 18, 2008
This is my first Meg Wolitzer novel and I wasn't disappointed. Wolitzer gets it, the particular need to please of a certain kind of woman who hasn't yet grown in to the person she would like to be because she's bent on supporting her man. And then it backfires, so she's trapped. She's compromised too often, so often it's become a way of life.
The whole portrayal of The Literary Life is amusing, sad, and frenzied at the same time. You want to thump her husband even as you understand his appeal.
Yes, there's a surprise at the end that provides a certain satisfaction. A fun read!
 A beautifully backlit novel August 25, 2008
This is a powerful account of a woman writer who came of age before the feminist revolution and who felt powerless to overcome her own and society's shackles. Her awful compromise, revealed at the end, pours light back over the preceeding chapters in a revealing and appealing way.
The gradual decline of a marriage May 8, 2008
3 out of 5 found this review helpful
The Wife by Meg Wolitzer is difficult to categorize. There's a mystery that, seemingly, plays second fiddle in the story, yet it's the pivotal event that defines the characters' lives for over forty years. Through her protagonist, Ms. Wolitzer depicts many of the constraints and frustrations women were experiencing at a time when the second-wave feminist movement was hitting its stride. But The Wife is neither mystery nor feminist manifesto. I'd have to say that it's simply a story of a wife and her husband, the choices they make, and the effect these choices have on their lives.
In the mid-1950s, Joan Ames is a student at Smith College, where she falls for her married English professor, Joe Castleman. He is a fledgling and mediocre writer with one published short story. She, however, has a natural talent for writing and is flattered by Joe's admiration of her early efforts. After a brief affair, Joe leaves his wife and child for Joan, and they eventually marry. His writing career skyrockets with one successful novel after another. She does not pursue her writing and instead becomes a supportive housewife and loving mother. Over time, however, Joan becomes increasingly embittered by Joe's egotism and compulsive womanizing. Her story opens as they're en route to Helsinki, where he's to receive a distinguished literary award. It is during this trip that she decides to end their forty-five-year marriage. She thinks, "I don't want to be this person anymore, this person called Joe's wife."
Joan's dissatisfaction with her marriage is understandable, given Joe's dalliances, but what are puzzling are her unwavering support of her husband and his career, as well as the suppression of her own ambition to write. The reader quickly intuits that there's a secret here somewhere, shared only by husband and wife, that could account for Joan's attitudes and decades-long inaction. Ms. Wolitzer does not bury it deeply and if one reads carefully can be easily discovered halfway into the story. With or without it, the book is a candid exposition on a failing marriage, when partnership and its reciprocal obligations are reduced to an inequitable bargain. Through Joan's reminiscences, the author deftly illustrates how initial feelings of annoyance later morph into contempt, and finally to a sad indifference.
It's authentic and Ms. Wolitzer's voice is distinct all throughout, persuading me to care about her characters despite the absence of sentimentality in her writing. Her wit penetrates deeply and her irreverent observations of the literati and writers are not to be missed. It's been days since I read The Wife, but there's one particular scene I still chuckle about: (An awards rep in Helsinki is showing Joe where the ceremony will be held.) He says, "It is where you will go, sir, to receive your award and be feted." Behind his back, Joan murmurs, "Yes, Joe, you will be fetid."
I'd be laughing out loud if it wasn't so sad.
A Marriage of Wit and Heartache March 23, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Meg Wolitzer's sixth novel contains by far one of the most memorable and unique voices I have come across. The "wife," Joan Castleman, married to a world famous writer Joseph Castleman, is a woman whose keen wit and bitter sarcasm comes through on every page. Maybe what impresses me most about this novel is how the voice sustains itself for so long. How the extreme mixtures of anger, relief, love, and tenderness come together in an almost torrential downpour of prose. It was a novel for this generation, in the voice we would come to expect from someone in their mid-thirties. Yet Joan is over 60 years old and is in the process of reliving her marriage to her husband starting with the affair they had together while he was still married and an English professor at Smith. From there, we see Joan stand by her husband through his many affairs, as the wife behind the scenes that ultimately is the rock and the stable force in the family. I won't ruin the ending, but it is one that will make your stomach twist and turn from a mixture of surprise, anger, and ultimately, respect and understanding.
It really is the voice that drives this novel. Wolitzer's Joan is such a compelling character that you cannot help but really experience the ups and downs that have led her to where she is at the outset of the novel - on a flight to Helsinki with her husband who is about to win a big literary award, finally realizing it is time to end the marriage. The book is just over 200 pages, yet I found myself literally devouring each page at a breakneck pace. The Wife was actually listed as one of the most underrated books published in recent years and I can see why. I was thoroughly impressed with this and look forward to reading more of Wolitzer's work.
Interesting Quotes:
"All of them, the novelists, story writers, the poets, desperately long to win. If there is a prize, then there is someone somewhere on earth who desires it."
"Wives are meant to be sources of comfort, showering it like wedding rice."
"These men who have so much, need so much to sustain themselves. They are all appetite, it sometimes seems, all wide mouth and roaring stomach."
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