A Marriage of Wit and Heartache

The Wife by Meg Wolitzer

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.”