Tag Archives: W. Somerset Maugham

The Constant Wife by W. Somerset Maugham

Posted by Kate W in Fiction and tagged with , , , , , , ,

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

Posted by Kate W in Fiction and tagged with , , , , , , , , ,

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 →