The Good Wife Strikes Back
By: Elizabeth Buchan
Okay, uncle uncle already. Or auntie, auntie, same deal. I give up on this book. I bought it based on the cute, charming cover art and assumed that it would turn out to be a cute, charming tale of a lady of a certain age who Finds Herself just in time. It had some sort of British/Tuscan storyline hinted at in the jacket, and that seemed like a good start. Currently there are a number of books and movies in circulation featuring charm, villas, good food, good wine, ladies who live large and well, and Romance for people not in the first flush of youth.
Instead, what I got was a story of a political wife who’d just sent her daughter off on her first backpacking trip with friends to Australia and was still trying to come to grips with the social and behavioral demands of being married to a rising political star and member of Parliament. Her every action, word and gesture is scrutinized by the ever-present political aide. It sounds like she’d love to escape from this prison and somehow get back to Italy and take over the family business growing wine grapes, a career that she gave up “temporarily” soon after marrying and finding herself quickly pregnant.
Well, this book may appeal to many women for exactly that reason. But not to this woman. Remember? I’m childfree, though not as crabbily militant about it as I used to be in the days when I hung out with the hardliners online. And I just completely lack the “awwwww, it’s a sweet little baby” gene. And the “tell me all about your 18 hours in labor, with every gory detail” gene. I am just not into mommy-lit.
I figured if the book was clever and charming enough, it would turn out to be a completely diffrent kind of women’s novel. But every time the plot line in the present day would inch slowly forward, the action would shift to the protagonist’s past (Fanny? Was that her name? Can’t be bothered to go look it up). And everything in her past revolved around her increasingly unfulfilling relationship with her husband, and her increasingly more and more dewily fulfilling relationship with her baby. Entire chapters are devoted to the pregnancy, the birth, the rapturous breast-feeding, the tempestuous toddler years, and so on. Frankly, I wasn’t that interested in the kid in the past, but I did want to know what hijinks she was getting up to off in Oz with her girlfriends. She was slightly more interesting when she became a sullen teenager. I have a lot more in common with her than with her mum. And even the discovery of her husband’s infidelity paled in importance in the scheme of her life, because he swore it wouldn’t happen again, and anyway she had her precious child to care for and love. There was no explanation as to why there was just the one kid, though. That must have been in one of the bits I skipped. There’s a nephew and a dipsomaniac sister-in-law to add a bit of hectic upheaval now and then, but that’s about it for lively action in the past.
I started skipping a lot. There was a lot about her father, with plenty of foreshadowing of his inevitable demise before she’s able to realize her dream of growing grapes at his side on the family estate. There was even quite a lot about her first lover, a French wine grower of some standing who pops up in her life again and evidently adds the obligatory “problematic 2nd love interest” that tempts Fanny-whatsername to abandon her husband for good and all. Or something.
It was singularly lacking in charm, this book, even though the writer worked hard to inject some. I have absolutely nothing in common with the protagonist and never found her whingeing the least bit interesting. At about the point when Fanny takes a trip to Montana to visit with her mother and American step-father on their idyllic sounding ranch, I lost all interest, put the book down, and never picked it up again. It’s after this point that she apparently runs off to Italy for a sabbatical from her family and political responsibilities (it seems that in Britain, political wives have to swot up the issues, act as a sort of auxiliary secretary, and yet still look smashing in a little cocktail dress at diplomatic functions).
Gah. This one’s going in the Remaindered pile to be given away via Bookcrossings. Maybe someone else will adore and devour this book. I found it completely unloveable and indigestible.
