Tag Archives: literary wives book club

Literary Wives Club: Mrs Bridge by Evan S. Connell

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For the same reasons I enjoy the work of Richard Yates, I enjoyed Evan S. Connell’s novel, Mrs Bridge  – spare prose (not a single unnecessary word); intensely depressing; bleakly suburban; and satirical.

It does not go unnoticed that the protagonist, Mrs Bridge, has an exotic name – India – and that despite initially thinking to herself that ‘…she could get along very nicely without a husband’, she marries Walter (Mr Bridge) who promises her that ‘…one day he would take his wife on a tour of Europe.‘ Mr Bridge proceeds to focus on building his law practice, and providing well for his family (they have three children, Ruth, Carolyn (Corky), and Douglas). And India leads a very staid, conservative suburban life.

They had started off together to explore something that promised to be wonderful, and, of course, there had been wonderful times. And yet, thought Mrs Bridge, why is it that we haven’t – that nothing has – that whatever we–? Continue reading →

Literary Wives Club: The Soul of Kindness by Elizabeth Taylor

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Toward the end of the bridegroom’s speech, the bride turned to the side to throw crumbs of wedding cake to doves outside the marquee.

Although she had caused a little rustle of amusement among the guests, she did not know it: her husband was embarrassed by her behaviour and thought it early in their married life to be so: but she did not know that either.

And that is how we meet Flora, the bride and protagonist of Elizabeth Taylor’s The Soul of Kindness. Continue reading →

Literary Wives Club: Novel About My Wife by Emily Perkins

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I first came across New Zealand author Emily Perkins when I read her 2012 novel, The Forrests. I adored it, and on the strength of that I raced out and bought one of her earlier books, Novel About My Wife. It has languished on my shelf until now (and during that time I read her most recent book, Lioness, which I also enjoyed).

Novel About My Wife is narrated by struggling screenwriter, Tom Stone, as he combs back over the events that led to the death of his beloved wife, Ann. There are various elements in their story that initially seem important – Ann’s pregnancy; a train derailment; a new friend, Kate; a mugging; ongoing money issues; a road rage incident that results in a fist fight; a local homeless man whose constant presence looms; and their home beset with vermin, smells and strange noises. There are also flashbacks to the week the couple spent in Fiji, where Tom was working on a script about the Fijian coup, with a vampire/ zombie twist… I think that kind of says it all. This story was a hot mess. Continue reading →

The Constant Wife by W. Somerset Maugham

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I just love a drawing room play, and W. Somerset Maugham’s The Constant Wife offers all of the froth, ambiguity and sly humour that you would expect.

The story is relatively simple – Constance Middleton’s friends are aware that her husband, John, is having an affair with her best friend, Marie-Louise. The friends are busting to tell Constance but despite their broad hints, she is seemingly oblivious. Seemingly… actually, Constance has her own approach to extra-marital activity, and as John talks himself into a corner, it seems Constance is not quite in the precarious position her friends thought.

“Oh, my dear, you mustn’t be offended just because I’ve taken away from you the satisfaction of thinking that you have been deceiving me all these months.” Continue reading →

Literary Wives Club – Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus

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At some point when I was at university I realised that I couldn’t cook. My mum is an excellent cook and she advised me to ‘go back to basics’, which obviously made sense, and yet… I didn’t. What I actually did was remind myself that I had completed Year 12 chemistry, and cooking was essentially the same thing. So I approached cooking with precision (my mum is an intuitive cook, which I eventually understood comes with experience), and I managed well from there onward.

Which leads me to Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus – it’s hardly worth reviewing this book because I’m fairly sure that everyone bar me has read it. I read a sample chapter back in 2022 – it didn’t appeal at all so I never bothered. Except that it turned up on the Literary Wives rotation… and so, I tackled this story about a woman, Elizabeth, living in the early 1960s – chemist, mother, rower, star of a cooking show (but not a wife – although the book has plenty to say about wives in general). Continue reading →

Literary Wives Club: Euphoria by Elin Cullhed

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There is so much to Elin Cullhed’s Euphoria, I hardly know where to begin. Perhaps an appropriate starting point is that I found this novel wholly absorbing.

Euphoria is an account of Sylvia Plath’s final year, marked by significant events – the birth of her second child, Nick; the publication of her first novel, The Bell Jar; and the unraveling of her marriage to Ted Hughes.

It’s gutsy, isn’t it, to write a novel about the pleasure and pain of love from the first-person perspective of Plath, when Plath herself offered exactly that through her writing? And yet, Cullhed achieves something special here. As Plath ‘describes’ her domestic life (baking, gardening, beekeeping, entertaining) with Hughes and the children on their property in Devon, the reader is given access to her increasingly anguished thoughts – pain, uncertainty and doubt invade even the most ordinary moments. Continue reading →

Literary Wives Club: Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston

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Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston is one of those books that holds an important place in literary history. In America. I say that plainly because I imagine it’s a book that is listed for American school reading (in the same way that Rabbit Proof Fence pops up on the Australian curriculum), because of what it says about emancipation, racism, gender roles, and life in the South during the 1930s. Continue reading →

Literary Wives Club: Recipe for a Perfect Wife by Karma Brown

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Years ago, I saw a play performed by Melbourne Theatre Company called Home, I’m Darling. It begins with a 1950s couple – him returning from a tiring day at work, her waiting with his slippers and the newspaper. Except that it’s not the 1950s. It’s a ‘modern’ couple who play at husband and wife from the fifties. Was life ‘better’ then, when roles and expectations were clearly defined? This is what the play examined, as the couples’ life butted against that of their ‘modern’ friends.

I was thinking about the play as I read Recipe for a Perfect Wife by Karma Brown. Continue reading →