Culture Watch
In this issue:
Books
Catherine Ries reviews
The Wife by Meg Wolitzer. Every woman of ability who has
nurtured an 'important' man will find this story both familiar and
frustrating.
And Consider This
Getting
Along (almost) With Your Adult Kids by PhDs
Lois and Joel R. Davitz: Bonds forged between
parent and child are strong enough to bend and stretch to accommodate
each new stage of our lives and theirs.
Books
The Wife
a novel by Meg Wolitzer
Scribner, 219 pp
The irony of Meg Wolitzer's
"The Wife" is that for the first three-fourths of the book, we
learn much more about the husband, Joe, a self-centered, expansive man
who "owns the world," than we do about his wife, Joan. We don't really
get to know the woman narrating this story until nearly the end of the
novel.
Joan is a woman of considerable
talent who has given up a chance at a writing career to devote herself
to her husband and his success. She begins her story by telling us that
she decided to end her forty-year marriage to Joe while accompanying
him on a flight to Helsinki to accept a prestigious literary prize.
During this quiet flight, and at an apparently peaceful and successful
period in their marriage, Joan decides "enough."
Wolitzer's careful peeling
away of the layers of their marriage reveals a complex and unstated
agreement between this aging couple. Joan tells us of the beginning
of their relationship at Smith College, he as a charming professor and
she as a smitten student, and of the years of their marriage and his
growing fame. She invites us to examine her actions – and failures to
act – through the filter of social attitudes and limitations faced by
women in the world of journalism in the 50's, 60's and 70's. Every woman
of ability who has nurtured an 'important' man will find this story
both familiar and frustrating. How much is too much to give, and how
little is too little to ask in return?
This is, by nature, a sad
and thoughtful tale, but Wolitzer's unexpected flashes of humor keep
the story from becoming simply depressing. The "shocking" ending should
come as no real surprise to the reader, but it is exciting and ultimately
satisfying.
The Wife is a quick,
enjoyable read, with food for thought and self-examination.
Review of Getting Along (almost) With Your
Adult Kids>>
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