The Wife - Meg Wolitzer
The Wife is an example of the rare occasion I watch a movie adaptation before reading the book. I was astounded by Glenn Close’s restrained, yet seething performance of Meg Wolitzer’s titular character, Joan Castleman. After watching the film, I was compelled to read the source material but only managed to get around to the book recently, seventeen years after its release.
Wolitzer astutely explores the different ways men and women are treated by society through the context of marriage in a slim novel that packs a real punch. She tells her story through the voice of Joan - the wife of an acclaimed writer, who, at the outset of the novel receives news that he is winning a prestigious literary prize. Joan’s narration begins in the first-class cabin as the couple journey to Helsinki to accept Joe’s award; from her, we learn the story of their marriage, from their very first meeting. Joan’s voice is seething with a restrained rage, not bitter, but very funny in places.
There is much emotional complexity squeezed into the novel’s 224 pages and we see how the very nature of marriage - the lives of two people becoming intertwined - lends itself to a certain amount of psychological and historical intricacy. Woltizer paints the complicated picture of the Castleman’s marriage with ease while dissecting the role of women in the fifties, in marriage, education, and the workplace. Though she’s telling this story from Joan’s perspective, and while Joe is a flawed character, Joan is also willing to admit the role she' has played in leading them to the point where we meet them. Joan isn’t a victim, something that gives the novel a strong feminist streak.
“The moment I decided to leave him, the moment I thought, enough, we were thirty five-thousand feet above the ocean, hurtling forward but giving the illusion of stillness and tranqulity.” - Meg Wolitzer, The Wife.
Without giving away any plot points, the novel builds towards a dramatic climax, without losing sight of the very internal story Wolitzer is telling. It’s easy to see how the novel was perfect source material for Glenn Close to construct her Academy Award-nominated performance, and if Olivia Colman hadn’t taken the Best Actress prize for The Favourite, I’d have said Close was robbed.
If you like your fiction light on dramatic action, but heavy on characterisation - a novel which you finish, feeling like you’ve known the protagonist all your life - The Wife is the novel for you.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️/5
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