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Overview
The moment Joan Castleman decides to leave her husband, they are thirty-five thousand feet above the ocean on a flight to Helsinki. Joan's husband, Joseph, is one of America's preeminent novelists, about to receive a prestigious international award, and Joan, who has spent forty years subjugating her own literary talents to fan the flames of his career, has finally decided to stop. From this gripping opening, Meg Wolitzer flashes back to 1950s Smith College and Greenwich Village and follows the course of the marriage that has brought the couple to this breaking point — one that results in a shocking revelation.
With her skillful storytelling and pitch-perfect observations, Wolitzer has crafted a wise and candid look at the choices all men and women make — in marriage, work, and life.
Synopsis
"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 and tranquility. Just like our marriage." So opens Meg Wolitzer's compelling and 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, and who derives much of his style from the Dylan Thomas Handbook of Personal Hygiene and Etiquette." He is also one of America's preeminent novelists, about to receive a prestigious international award to honor his accomplishments, and Joan, who has spent forty years subjugating her own literary talents to fan the flames of his career, has finally decided to stop.
From this gripping opening, Wolitzer flashes back fifty years to 1950s Smith College and Greenwich Village -- the beginning of the Castleman relationship -- and follows the course of the famous marriage that has brought them to this breaking point, culminating in a shocking ending that outs a carefully kept secret.
Wolitzer's most important and 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. But it's also an unusually candid look at the choices all men and women make for themselves, in marriage, work, and life. With her skillful storytelling and pitch-perfect observations, Wolitzer invites intriguing questions about the nature of partnership and the precarious position of an ambitious woman in a man's world.
The Washington Post
To say that The Wife is Wolitzer's most ambitious novel to date is an understatement. This important book introduces another side of a writer we thought we knew: Never before has she written so feverishly, so courageously. It almost becomes possible to imagine a female Philip Roth: The keen intelligence, rage, neurosis and humor are certainly equal to his, but this is not to say the book is derivative. Hers is a wholly original voice, as she tells the story not only of a marriage built on uneven compromises, but also of a woman's poignant self-discovery. Readers born after 1970 may not appreciate what motivates Joan Castleman, but it is crucial to know this woman — many of us already do and don't even realize it. — Kera Bolonik
Editorials
The New York Times Book Review
Here are three words that land with a thunk: "gender," "writing" and "identity." Yet in "The Wife," Meg Wolitzer has fashioned a light-stepping, streamlined novel from just these dolorous, bitter-sounding themes. Maybe that's because she's set them all smoldering: rage might be the signature emotion of the powerless, but in Wolitzer's hands, rage is also very funny…. As a portrait of deception, this small, intelligently made novel rivals "The Dangerous Husband," by Jane Shapiro, and John Lanchester's "Debt to Pleasure."…. But if "The Wife is a puzzle and an entertainment, it is also a near-heartbreaking document of feminist realpolitik. Claire DedererLos Angeles Times
Meg Wolitzer has ripened into a chanteuse of a writer, a Dietrich of fiction; her smoky humor, her languid look at life, her breathless sentences are all let loose a little more than usual in "The Wife."Joan is 64, married to a literary lion, Joe Castleman, one of the big men in the world who "derived much of his style from 'The Dylan Thomas Handbook of Personal Hygiene and Etiquette.' " They are on their way to Helsinki where he will receive the prestigious Helsinki Prize, $525,000, awarded to a writer, one step down from the Nobel. This is as far as Joan will climb with him, though he does not yet know it. While their three children have grown in various states of contortion around his ego and their marriage, she is the real writer in the marriage, and she has borne him all the way: his affairs, successes, setbacks with a grace that is the envy of their friends and acquaintances. But now she's done. Not mad, just ready to have her own life.
It has by no means been a life of quiet suffering. It was a life she chose as a young student at Smith College, a promising writer in her own right, who fell in love with her professor, Castleman, and seduced him knowingly, so that he was eventually forced to leave his wife and baby daughter. She became the "alpha wife" at literary conferences and parties, and she enjoys it with a kind of Mrs. Ramseylike artfulness.
Various literary women make an impression on her and haunt her decisions: "Mary McCarthy and Lillian Hellman and Carson McCullers.… If I opened the lid, their heads would pop out like jack-in-the-box clowns on springs, mocking me, reminding me that they existed, that women could occasionally become important writers with formidable careers."
Wolitzer's world is John Updike's world, but her writing is at once grittier and bigger. It's hard to tell how old she is because she writes with so little bitterness. I hope that "The Wife" might appeal to both men and women. It is as much about the male psyche as it is about the woman's. --Susan Salter Reynolds