This book is amazing. Wolitzer perfectly captures the voice of a wife who has gone bitter and is full of some regrets on how she lived her life. The main character, Joan Castleman is flying to Finland with her husband, Joseph "Joe" Castleman. Joe has won the Helsinki for her works in literature. Joan starts to think back to when she first met Joe and also provides insight into how he is based on the women who raised him. The back and forth to the past and present really works and you start to get a glimmer of why Joan may be resentful of her husband. This book opens up a lot of questions I think. One, what does it mean to be successful? Two, what does it mean to be a wife and a mother? Three, would you give up one thing, just so that you could have the love of someone? Four, do all marriages have secrets that still leak to those around them? This was very short (just over 200 pages) so the reading went fast. 

"The Wife" follows 60 year old Joan Castleman who reluctantly is traveling with her husband Joe as he goes to Finland to accept his Helsinki award. I have to confess at this point I didn't even know this was a real award, and then went and looked it up. It seems the award is mired in controversy, so good on Wolitzer for using this framework in her story. Joan we find is ready to leave Joe. She plans on asking him for a divorce when they return home since she realizes she is not happy in their marriage and has not been for a while. As Joan flashbacks to when she first met Joe, their marriage, and their children. 

I found Joan's voice full of acid. The character has a turn of phrase. She is also very observant you find to what is going on around her. You may initially not like her, especially when you find out how she and Joe got involved, but I moved to pity really quickly when it becomes apparent that she's in over her head with Joe and that perhaps the only reason they stay together is something else more than just being in love and their three kids.

Via Joan we get insight into Joe (he's a cheater, self-involved, jealous of other's success) and their three children. Though we talk of Joan and Joe's two daughters, the one child we focus on is their son David. We don't know what happened initially, but we do know that Joe and David are estranged and that David at one point attacked his father. And slowly but surely Joan leads the readers back to the secrets of her marriage, and things she was pretty much hiding from herself so she didn't dwell on it too much. 

I loved the writing in this book. As I said, Joan's words are full of acid. This is a woman who has seen not all, but enough, and who is realizing that she should have been brave enough to choose another path. 

"And even the brunette flight attendant, who had earlier seemed such a seduction to Joe, now looked like a tired hooker who wants to call it quits. She had no more cookies to offer; her basket was empty."

 

"There was his first novel, The Walnut, that slender book from a much more innocent time, about a married professor and his best student who fall in love, leading to an event that causes the professor to hurriedly abandon his wife and child, flee to New York City with the student, and eventually marry her. This book is pure autobiography—the story of the two of us and Joe’s first wife, Carol."

 

"But wives, oh wives, when they weren’t being bitter or melancholy or counting the beads on their abacus of disappointment, they could take care of you with delicate and effortless ease."

 

“The men!” she said. “No offense, but how can you stand them, Joan? They just talk and talk and never shut themselves up." 

 

The flow of the book was good. At first you may wonder why at times Joan goes over the same events, but you realize why after a while. You get the first impression of the event and then what was actually going on then. Joan realizes that all she is seen as by the outside world is Joe's wife. She's there to steer him and keep him safe and sound. She realizes that she wants a wife or should have one that could have done the same for her. 

The setting of the book takes place in the early 2000s and jumps back and forth to the 1950s and up through the decades of Joe and Joan's marriage. 

The ending though leaves Joan with a chance to reveal a greater truth, but she chooses not to do so, because in the end, she decides to do what wives do, take care of their husbands. 

Wow. This is good. A story of how a marriage first started and how the wife (Joan) was really there to propel her husband to greatness. I also loved it delving into how women authors were perceived in the 1950s and how that attitude ended up changing over time. Or has it?

If you've been following along at home: http://carissagreen50.booklikes.com/post/1788732/literary-mysteries-the-case-of-the-unsatisfying-ending

I took the Target-purchased copy, along with the library's book, to the reference librarian the other night. 

"I checked out this book, and the ending was terrible," I said.

The poor woman looked at me with the "It's a half-hour before closing, and you're the 29th crazy person who has talked to me today." 

So I let her off the hook: "Long story short," I said, "the library's book is missing almost 30 pages." I did leave the Target copy with her.

She couldn't have been nicer about the whole thing. We both hope the library can get a credit for their bad book, too. 

-cg

Yesterday, I finished "The Wife," by Meg Wolitzer. Or - I thought I finished it. 

The book was really good. Compelling story and excellent sentence-level writing. I enjoyed it a lot. Until I got to the end. The ending was a let-down, frankly, and disappointing compared to the rest of the book. It ended on a quote. Which if you've read as many novels as I have over the years is odd, but not unheard-of. But the quote, although cutting, did not resolve the situation between the characters arguing. But there you go: The end. No more pages. Literally. 

Literally.No.More.Pages. It ended at the bottom of a page - which sometimes happens - and there were no more pages in the volume. Page 192, if you're keeping track at home. No more endpapers. No advertisements. No author bio. Odd, but I suppose it's a quickie movie tie-in, so whatever. 

But it bugged me: Why did the book end so unsatisfactorily? I Googled some reviews today, and everyone talked about the "big twist" at the end. Big twist? Hmm. There was no big twist. A bunch of clues, but what I thought those clues were leading to didn't happen. And then I got suspicious . . . 

Maybe I really didn't get to read the whole book.

So I went sleuthing. The internet tells me the book should have been more than 200 pages. Mine (the Public Library's, actually) was 192. Hmm. But the book cataloging site is notoriously inaccurate much of the time. Still not proof. I needed to see another copy of the book. 

After work. Campus bookstore = no copies. Local bookstore = no copies. Target. Bless you, Target. Had the book. 219 pages of story. An author bio. The usual useless book club questions. So I bought it. 

And finished the book. And the "twist" I saw coming WAS there. (Really, if you've ever read Virginia Woolf's "A Room of One's Own," and paid attention to the clues Wolitzer gave throughout the manuscript, you know it's coming. But it's a double-twist. The end-end is sort of predictable. It could have gone two other ways, but it went the way it went. Much better. As a reader, I didn't love the ending, but I was satisfied that the story was over. Wrapped up and finished. Good job, Meg Wolitzer. 

So what next? I'm going to take the bad copy and the Target copy to the library later this week. I hope the library can get a refund from their distributor, and I will offer them my copy, if they wish to have it. I don't have a lot of storage space for books, and this one isn't a "keeper" for me. 

I'll update you if anything interesting happens! 

-cg

The Female Persuasion, by Meg Wolitzer, author; Rebecca Lowman, narrator

Although the novel was probably meant to illustrate the abuse of women and to support a change in that environment, I did not feel it accomplished that goal, nor did I feel that it was authentic in its approach. There seemed to be too much of an effort to present the liberal agenda regarding sexual expression, language and opportunity for all. Most of the characters appeared to have some kind of a dysfunction, or they were selfish, self-absorbed, and self-serving to some degree. Those that weren’t were out of the mainstream or emotionally unstable for a time.

I found few narratives with pure causes or appropriately moral behavior. Of course corporate greed was a major villain in the book, but so were the people who ran feminist organizations once they entered the mainstream market. Most of the characters were flawed. Many of them were willing to compromise ethics in order to serve their own needs.

While reading this, I questioned why so many female authors seem to feel they have to pepper their books liberally with filthy language, unacceptable under most circumstances, and sex that veers close to what once was called pornography. It diminishes their credibility in my eyes and diminishes the quality of the book. When a book masquerades as an important piece of writing, but is really a political message, using low class language, it is disappointing. I do not feel that I have to use my mouth as a toilet in order to compete or to be strong or acceptable.

At times, I found the dialogue defied reality in its innocent simplicity when it came from the mouths of supposed geniuses. In order to satisfy the needs of the current PC culture, the author included all sorts of liberal themes. The reader is confronted with words like cisgender and trans. There are lesbians and homosexuals. There are Latinos, and of course, they are super moral and hard-working, but poor; there are inappropriate jokes about Jews and race, however, and completely inappropriate language is used in normal conversation. Personally, I have no interest in homosexual sex or in women who are portrayed as weak and mindless, unfeminine and loud. Frankly, I am tired of the progressive agenda infecting all of the literature that is being produced today. When it is not overt, it is hidden in the various messages and themes that are subtly presented. I am being bombarded with a belief system I do not necessarily support 100%.

The “heroine” worship of the characters portrayed as feminists, coupled with their dysfunctional personalities, only made me wonder why the feminist movement ever even caught on. It felt as if in order to participate in the movement, one had to exhibit some kind of anger, disappointment or dysfunction of personality or goal. I wondered, what did feminists really want? From this book, I got the impression it was fame, fortune, and, as a by-product, perhaps more freedom for women. Did the end justify the means?

Abortion, of course, was front and center, portrayed as a magic bullet or cure-all for the world’s ills. Women’s rights, gay rights, civil rights, LGBT issues, gender terms, sexual freedom, misogyny, an unjust judicial system when it came to adjudicating the abuse of women, and drug abuse are major themes introduced but not all are broadly developed; some seemed as if they were introduced as propaganda. Filial devotion and responsibility, parenting or lack thereof, and parent/child relationships were more heavily developed with the emphasis on maturity moving the characters to be more accepting of their own mistakes and the mistakes of others.

The main character is Greer Kadetsky. She is disappointed with her parents’ parenting skills. She wants more attention and discipline than they are willing to provide. Her parents are very much into their own personal satisfaction and pleasure. Greer’s parents are atheists who were often high on marijuana. They are left over hippies. Her best friend, Zee, is a lesbian. She may be Jewish, judging from her name and residence. She comes from Scarsdale, a suburb of Westchester heavily populated by people of the Jewish faith. Both of her parents are judges. They are the stereotypical Jewish family, educated and people of the book. She is portrayed stereotypically as financially solvent, as well. She is wealthy, but unsatisfied with her life which feels meaningless. She tries to please her parents rather than herself. She identifies happily as female but prefers females to males. Both Greer and Zee come from “white privilege”. Greer’s boyfriend is a Latino who has hard-working parents who pay attention to his needs. They are sterling examples until a tragic accident alters all of their expectations and futures. Faith Frank is the woman that Greer idolizes. She is a fraternal twin, from Brooklyn. She is not close to her brother. She is portrayed as aging and self-serving, but also as a great communicator. She is a prominent activist for women’s rights and Greer winds up working with her.

Regarding sexual abuse, many of the women perceive it in varying proportions, from groping to rape, with all intervening stages as almost equal in injustice.  They are very offended by what they perceive as bad behavior in most men, however, they sometimes seem to encourage the poor behavior and to tolerate it for the sake of their own advancement. This makes them somewhat complicit in my eyes. I think the book fails in its attempt to adequately promote the causes women wish to highlight. Also, there are men who are abusive to women, who have unreal expectations of what liberties they are allowed to take, but they are not in the majority, in my experience. In the book, the reader is made to feel that every man has the tendency to take advantage of a female.

I did not feel that the author authentically presented this issue of women’s rights. She became too embroiled with reproductive rights and the PC culture, which was to the detriment of the issues in the workplace environment and injustice to women in general. Too many of the feminists were unhappy and sexually confused and the men who supported them did not seem masculine, as if someone with masculine tendencies had to be driven by his sex organ, not his brain or his heart. The ending was too much like a fairy tale with everyone finding their nirvana.