The Wife

"The moment I decided to leave him, the moment I thought, enough, we were thirty-five thousand feet above the ocean, hurtling forward but giving the illusion of stillness & tranquillity. Just like our marriage."

So opens Meg Wolitzer's compelling & provocative novel The Wife, as Joan Castleman sits beside her husband on their flight to Helsinki. Joan's husband, Joseph Castleman, is "one of those men who own the world...who has no idea how to take care of himself or anyone else, & who derives much of his style from the Dylan Thomas Handbook of Personal Hygiene & Etiquette." He is also one of America's preeminent novelists, about to receive a prestigious international award to honour his accomplishments, & Joan, who has spent forty years subjugating her own literary talents to fan the flames of his career, has finally decided to stop.

Meg Wolitzer's most important & ambitious book to date, The Wife is a wise, sharp-eyed, compulsively readable story about a woman forced to confront the sacrifices she's made in order to achieve the life she thought she wanted. 

"..a light-stepping, streamlined novel ... rage might be the signature emotion of the powerless, but in Wolitzer's hands, rage is also very funny ... Wolitzer deploys a calm, seamless humour not found in her previous novels ... they gradually accumulate, creating a rueful, sardonic atmosphere ... The book represents a real step forward for Wolitzer, and its success lies in its reticence ... if The Wife is a puzzle & entertainment, it's also a near heartbreaking document of feminist realpolitik." — Claire Dederer, The New York Times