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.
About the Author
Meg Wolitzer is the New York Times bestselling author of The Female Persuasion, The Interestings, The Uncoupling, The Ten-Year Nap, The Position, and other novels. Wolitzer lives in New York City.
Review
In 2018, I saw the trailer for the movie, starring Glenn Close and Jonathan Pryce, and was sufficiently interested to seek out the book. I wasn't familiar with Wolitzer's work prior to this. The mention of air marshals on the plane and references to terrorism within the story prompted me to check the original publication date, which was 2003, that very strange and troubling post-9/11 era. The cover is basically the movie poster with the actors' faces. The title and author text are done in a typewriter-looking font. Sadly, the e-book was far more expensive than the paperback at the time so paperback it was. It was a fairly quick read since it's not a very long book.
If this book was an AITA (Am I The Asshole) post, I would vote ESH (Everyone Sucks Here). It has its funny moments but mostly it's a mildly infuriating read. Anyone who has done any sort of research on male authors or artists will quickly realize there's usually a talented and skilled woman in the background helping so I was really wondering what would be different here. The answer is not much. The ending was also not particularly satisfying.
The bit that stayed with me:
Everyone liked me because I was not only a wife, I was the alpha wife, the spouse of the alpha dog. The alpha dog who, everyone knew, was blithely cheating on me, fucking himself dizzy in Birchbark, separated from Peachtree only by Wildwood and Silverspruce and by the great wooden dining hall, with its summer-camp smells and fresh-out-of-the-dishwasher glasses that warmed my orange juice each morning to approximately the temperature of the bath I took each night. (Wolitzer, 2018, p. 171)
It sums up Joan's unhappy situation in a very long, rambling way but the real reason I like it is the part about the orange juice, which I had a very strong reaction to. I could smell and taste it. We've all had that steamy glass of too-warm juice. Those are the bits of Wolitzer's writing that I liked.
While I didn't hate the book and there were good parts, I don't want to keep it on my shelf. It would have been fine as an e-book.
Verdict: Donate
* Spoilers *
If the "shocking revelation" mentioned in the blurb is supposed to be that Joan is really the author of Joe's books, that was already strongly hinted at one-third of the way into the story when young, infatuated, college student Joan is reading Professor Castleman's short story and realizing it's not good at all. By the halfway point, it's pretty much confirmed when chapter three ends with Joe handing Joan the draft of his first novel and chapter four starts with the published novel's success, skipping neatly over the part of how it got to that point. It isn't until almost the end of the book that we get the actual scene of Joan reading the draft and revising it.
Or maybe the blurb means Joe dying shortly after Joan tells him she wants to leave, rendering her decision moot. That I didn't see coming but I should have, with all the talk about his heart and getting old. But in the end, Joan still gets what she wants, I guess.
This is a story about people using one another, hence my ESH vote above. Married and with a newborn child, Joe sets out to seduce his talented student in a tale as old as time. Joan, warned she'll never make it as a female author in a publishing world dominated by men, uses Joe as a living, breathing pen name. She makes him look brilliant and sophisticated, garnering him the attention and accolades he so desperately wants and believes he deserves. I think she decides to leave him because this prestigious award is the culmination of her life's work. After that, staying with him serves no purpose. He's a lousy writer, husband, and father after all.
Thrown into the mix is Nathaniel Bone, a literary critic and admirer who wants to be Joe's biographer. Joan denies him the privilege when he attempts to reach Joe through her, presumably because she has nothing to gain by giving him access and possibly outing herself in the process. Joan gave Joe everything; Nathaniel gets not a single crumb.
I don't care about Nathaniel, who's basically another Joe-in-training, but this is why I found the ending somewhat unsatisfactory. Joan never admits her role as her husband's unofficial ghost writer and lies to Nathaniel at the very end, saying that Joe was a good writer and she would miss him. A truly shocking revelation would have been going public with the truth. America's beloved author outed as a total fraud!
On the other hand, the ending leaves room for Joan to take on the role of Joe's biographer and finally wield her talent publicly. No doubt people will say she's so good because of her close proximity to Joe's genius through all those years of their marriage. But perhaps she's the sort for whom personal satisfaction of a job well done is enough.
Maybe Joan will truly miss Joe if only because he was a means to fulfilling her dreams but perhaps she can flourish in the 21st century as she could not have 40 years prior. In the end, there is little comfort to be had in this story.