The Wife - Softcover

Wolitzer, Meg

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1982110767 ISBN 13: 9781982110765

Publisher: Pocket Books, 2018

Synopsis

Now a major motion picture starring Glenn Close in her Golden Globe-winning role!

One of bestselling author Meg Wolitzer's most beloved books--an "acerbically funny" (Entertainment Weekly) and "intelligent...portrait of deception" (The New York Times).

The Wife is the story of the long and stormy marriage between a world-famous novelist, Joe Castleman, and his wife Joan, and the secret they've kept for decades. The novel opens just as Joe is about to receive a prestigious international award, The Helsinki Prize, to honor his career as one of America's preeminent novelists. Joan, who has spent forty years subjugating her own literary talents to fan the flames of his career, finally decides to stop.

Important and ambitious, The Wife is a sharp-eyed and 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 rollicking, perfectly pitched triumph...Wolitzer's talent for comedy of manners reaches a heady high" (Los Angeles Times), in this wise and candid look at the choices all men and women make--in marriage, work, and life.

About this title

Review:

A New York Times Notable Book

"Acerbically funny . . . Wolitzer keeps us guessing right up until the gut-wrenching twist of a finale."
--Entertainment Weekly

"There are women in New York City who would kill to be Joan Castleman . . . [Wolitzer] paints an urbane picture of the book world of the '50s and '60s, when male writers would put down their pens and use their fists. Her hilarious gripes about marriage make this tale a pleasure best indulged in away from your better half."
--People

"Meg Wolitzer's sixth novel, The Wife, may be her boldest yet--an exploration of the passionate highs and divorce-threatening lows of Joan and Joe Castleman's forty-year marriage, delivered with signature wit, warmth, and a wise, woman's-eye view."
--Elle

"The Wife is a difficult book to put down, written with Wolitzer's customary wit and verve."
--The Raleigh News & Observer

"A tale of witty disillusionment . . . Wolitzer's crisp pacing and dry wit carry us headlong into a devastating message about the price of love and fame. If it's a story we've heard before, the tale is as resonant as ever in Wolitzer's hands."
--Publishers Weekly

"Meg Wolitzer's sixth novel is her best--an astonishingly dry, funny, and gripping account of two writers trapped for life in an evermore bizarre marriage. Every detail she evokes about an era in American literary life, from college campuses to writers' parties, is persuasive, hilarious, and even frightening, while the indignation she registers about her heroine's predicaments is lightened and even liberated by her perfect comic timing. The Wife is a milestone in the career of one of her generation's truest novelists."
--Adam Gopnik

"How does Meg Wolitzer do it? Write those witty, deft, hilarious sentences that add up to so much tragic understanding of life? The Wife is a funny, sad, beautiful novel. Unforgettable."
--Katha Pollitt

"Funny, smart, sad, gripping, and utterly surprising. Meg Wolitzer's subjects are the yin and yang of love and hate, and the various strange and shadowy transactions at the heart of a marriage--specifically a marriage between members of that cohort too young to snuggle easily into the certainties of the Greatest Generation and too old to catch feminism's wave."
--Kurt Andersen

"A rollicking, perfectly pitched triumph. . . Wolitzer's talent for comedy of manners reaches a heady high."
--Los Angeles Times

About the Author:

Meg Wolitzer's novels include The Female Persuasion; Sleepwalking; This Is Your Life; Surrender, Dorothy; and The Position. She lives in New York City.

About this edition

• Publisher: Pocket Books
• Publication date: 2018
• ISBN 10: 1982110767
• ISBN 13: 9781982110765
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• Number of pages: 288