Customer Reviews

The Adultery Club

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Nicholas Lyon is a divorce attorney from London. Over and over, he has to listen to frightened husbands and scornful wives jabber about adultery and alimony rights. It's a good thing he is smarter than those people. He is happily married to a beautiful chef and author of cookbooks, and at forty-three, he is older and wiser and would never make the sort of mistakes his clients make. Well, we know what's coming. Sara Kaplan is nowhere near as attractive as Nick's wife, but there is something intriguing and sensual about the twenty-five-year-old new blood at his law firm. Desire seeps through him whenever they spend time together, and in spite of his Herculean efforts to resist her, it is almost impossible to do so. Malinche Lyon, Nick's wife, has a brilliant career of her own and dotes on her three daughters with the help of her gay best friend. She loves Nick and adores her family. But she can't help but ask herself if this is as good as life will ever get for her. After all, she's been married for ten years; she's in her mid thirties, still young and beautiful. Ten more years of the same thing sound very daunting. And that is why she is faced with a temptation of her very own...

The premise is interesting. I like how we get the three points of view and how the stories and situations fuse together. Tess Stimson does a wonderful job doing that, which is why she gets two stars. However, I was disappointed with the execution. I enjoy reading novels that have a dark voice and storyline, and I've also enjoyed novels whose main characters aren't very likable (Love Creeps by Amanda Filipacchi and In the Drink by Kate Christensen spring to mind), but this author succeeded in making these characters so unlikable that I literally couldn't stand them. Malinche is the one I identified with the most, the least unlikable one, which surprised me because I thought I'd be more on Sara's side, being single and all. Nicholas is simply insufferable. I read novels written by men for (mainly) men all the time. I'm a big fan of Jonathan Tropper, Nick Hornby and a few others. I also grew up with four brothers, and I know very well how men talk and think when they're strewn together. But I think that Stimson took the whole men-think-about-sex-and-their-organs-every-sixty-seconds thing a little too literal. Nicholas doesn't go two paragraphs without mentioning his genitals. The slightest thing causes him to have an erection. And reading about the uncomfortable state of his privates during a meeting, phone conversation, party or wherever he, his wife and/or Sara were gathered annoyed me. Three-hundred and sixty-something pages of reading this became exhausting, and I had to force myself to finish this book. The Adultery Club could have been a clever, tongue-in-cheek approach to marriage and infidelity. Alas, it isn't, at least not by my measure. Stimson has written another novel in this vein called The Infidelity Chain. Uh, I think I'll pass on that one.

The main characters in this book are almost completely unlikeable.
the man is unable to go more than 2 sentences before referencing his genitals, and this continues through the whole book. his entire reason for loving his wife seems to center around their sex life and various sexual acts she's performed for him. he puts forth absolutely no effort to avoid having an affair. he's a pompous, arrogant jerk, plain and simple, and i heartily disliked him by the second page.
the mistress is just a nasty little piece of work who assumes she's smarter/better/prettier than anyone has a right to be. she sets her sights on a married man and decides it's ok since his wife is probably boring. she's so arrogant and so convinced of her superiority to the wife and womankind in general, one can't help but want bad things to happen to her.
the wife is ok. a little slow to realize an obvious affair, but at the end she totally destroys any sort of goodwill i'd built for her by doing something totally ludicrous for a man who could not deserve it less. also, for such an astoundingly busy woman, she's awfully scatterbrained. and the business with her ex fiance and her husband being ok with them traveling europe together? um....ok. if you say so.
anyway, this was an easy read and the writer has a good style, so i couldn't go ahead and give it just one star.

I know you cannot really see me nibbling away at this imaginary plate of crow that's sitting in front of me, but what else can I say? I did sooo NOT want to like this book! I'm not a fan of adultery, and just couldn't imagine a book with the title of The Adultery Club being very readable or enjoyable. Nice cover, though. And that's mostly what reeled me in.

Major kudos, however, to the author Tess Stimson, for creating a plausible plot, three totally dissimilar characters and a world full of insight into character, motivation, want, lust, and most of all--LOVE. There's also a good bit of really blatant, down and dirty sex in here, so if that sort of thing is liable to turn you off, then better you don't read it.

Nicholas Lyon is a 40-ish divorce lawyer in London, happily married for slightly more than ten years to Malinche, now in her mid-to-late 30s, successful author of cookery books and mother of their three daughters, 8, 6 and not quite 2. Sara Kaplan is a 20-something solicitor who joins Nick's lawfirm, on the retirement of one of the partners.

You might think, from this setup, that you know what's going to happen. And it does, but be prepared for fireworks of all sorts, foolishness from all of them, and heart-rending confessions of a multitude of sins, again from all of them, as told to various family and friends.

Stiff upper-lip Brit old-school Nick never, ever thought he would stray from his marriage vows. He saw so much marital wreckage in his work, he thought he was immune. Malinche has never been tempted, either, since their marriage, until her first love comes back into her life. Trace values her as a creative individual in her own right--AND tells her about it, constantly. Sara, very much a bright young thing, knows what she wants and will blaze through anything or anyone who gets in her way. She is self-indulgent beyond the ken of regular people, and really doesn't much care what happens to them, either, until it happens to her.

The author does a fantastic job, in my opinion, with these characters, who are, on the surface so vastly different from each other, yet underneath are all too similar. Actually, when you get right down to it, we all want the same things: We want to be loved (even when we're at our most unloveable) and appreciated, and cared for, and surprised by seemingly trivial little things, but which turn out to be of monstrous proportions.

Each character -- coming from a different generation than the others -- is a product of that generation, with a different outlook on life and love and lust. But underneath, the similarities are profound. Told in first person by each of them, the variance of language and attitude is astonishing. Brilliant!

All the more reason, then, to learn why we should not rush to indulge ourselves in momentary passion, no matter how enticing. Much better we learn to value what we have, before we--oh, so casually--throw it away.

THE ADULTERY CLUB is brilliantly conceived: A report by the three principals, the husband, the wife, and the husband's mistress. The story is told by each of them in turn: Not sequentially but, instead, reflecting their own perceptions of the same situations. Yes, the technique has been used before, but not often, and author Tess Stimson utilizes it masterfully.

The problem, then, lies in the fact that the characters are not fully formed and that all of them, even the wronged wife, essentially are dislikable. It's also implausible that waiting in the wings, as it were, is the most handsome, most successful man in England--perhaps the most handsome man in the whole world--just waiting to comfort the wife.

Another problem that cannot be ignored is the author's integration into her novel of tired and silly jokes that have been circling the Internet now for years.

THE ADULTERY CLUB is a good idea, but its execution could be far better.

I loved. Couldn't stop reading it. Loved the way it is written with every's character point of view of the same situation. Loved the way she could describe both male and female senses at this "secret" scenario of infidelity. The lust, the lingieri, the secret presents, the every day turning off house tasks, etc. Modern, and easy to read. There is a lto of sex in the story although you barely read about sex details in it. Your mind fills the gaps. Recommendable for people that might feel represented for any of the characters. If you are over 25 and below 50, like sex, go get it.

Overall it wasn't a bad book, but it still left me with questions. As one reviewer pointed out why would the husband be okay with the wife traveling around with her ex-boyfriend? Maybe he didn't realize it or maybe he was more concerned with his fling on the side. How could this man who claims to love his wife buy the mistress a 2 carat diamond ring while his wife only sports a wedding band? How could he decide to divorce his wife, initiate the proceedings, and such just because his mistress claims to be pregnant? And all after he calls and leaves that message on her machine???? What about the three little girls who are already here??? And where was the groveling???? I could handle the adultery in books as long as I felt the perpetrator was truly sorry. Didn't ring true here!! It really was like he wanted his cake and he wanted to eat it too!!!! So as the book asks whose side will you be on? I would say not his, because he couldn't resist the temptation, he seemed selfish and untrustworthy; not Sara's because she was also just like him, selfish and untrustorthy; Malinche, maybe a little bit but then she was going to ignore the whole thing, not make him pay and she was a bit childish when she immediately fell into bed with Trace not caring about his feelings; so I guess the side I am down on is the little girls!!! Who by the way are not stupid. Maybe Ms. Stimson's whole point of the story is that infidelity could very well be inscribed in our DNA, I don't think so but this book may make you think that. Especially when you examine the characters childhoods and how their parents were!!!

At page 122, I put this book down and refused to finish it. In the first 122 pages, Tess Stimson incorporated three stories/jokes/urban legends that have been circulating the internet for years into her own story. Is this author capable of an original thought? I am very disappointed.

First of all, let me note that I have only read two books in my life that I really, really disliked. I never write bad book reviews, because I just love stories, regardless of how cheesy, canny, or silly they may be.

However, I could not, in good conscience, let the hours I wasted reading what I thought would be an intriguing novel, go to waste.

This book was godawful. The premise was good, but the story itself was contrived, and the characters were so awful, I wanted to cut the pages out of the book, shred them, weave the fibers into a rope, and hang myself with them.

Malinche & Kit were a breath of fresh air, and rather creative to say the least, but I found myself wanting to puke during the chapters by Sara & Nicholas. Every time a chapter by Nicholas came up, I had to put on my blinders to ignore his talk of his ridiculous state of erection at the most absurd times (especially at the end of the book). When the chapters with Sara came up, I just grit my teeth through them to resist the urge to punch something wishing it was her face. Honestly, I wish I'd only read Malinche's parts.

By the middle of the book, I was screaming at Malinche to leave Nicholas's pompous, ridiculously horny self with Sara the Sleeze, and go live happily ever after with Kit, Trace, and the kids.

When the back cover asks "Whose side will you be on?" I was expecting the characters to be likable, and the infidelity to be something accidental. An accidental love affair where the man falls head over heals for the beautiful co-worker, and you know, isn't just using her for sex.

Far from it. The Mistress & Man were the farthest thing from likable, and the "inevitable infidelity" was completely ridiculous. Stimpson acts as if we have no control over our base instincts, and when we're astoundingly attracted to someone, we have to sleep with them or we'll die. I'm sorry, we're not animals,we're human beings. We have this wonderful thing called "higher intelligence". Yes, I'm sure there is the odd man and his mistress who are this irresponsible, irredeemable, and ridiculously lead around by their sex drive, but strangely enough, I've never met any of them.

I could be wrong, but I have a feeling that Tess has been cheated on and it did not go the way this book did. It seems to me that she intentionally made Sara the Irredeemable Slut and Nicholas the Horrendously Horny so terrible on purpose, and it seems less like it was to tell a good story and more to drive an axe.

It tells more like a therapy meeting for women who've been cheated on than a good novel. Sara is the godawful other woman, Nicholas is the stupid man who can't control his penis, and Malinche is the caring, forgiving wife who has to hold it all together, pick up the pieces, and get on with it for her everyone's sake.

I loved Malinche & the supporting cast. But when two of the three main characters are a mentally intelligent, but emotionally retarted bimbo and a man who can't control his own hormones at 43 years old, this book is doomed.

And to note, the two stars were for Malinche, Trace, Kit, & the kids. They actually made for a pretty good story. However, I was a bit saddened that she cheapened them with the gyno glitter, and the theft of Evie's "brilliant" lines from other sources.

Written from different points of view, the style of writing was conversational. I did think that Nick and Malinche were a bit wet. An easy read.

Enjoyable...Yes
Not an award winning novel...but fun. It's exactly what I expected from the start...entertainment.

I loved the way it was written in three different points of view. Left you looking forward to the next chapter to see what happened through the eyes of the next person.

Yes...it is a bit cheesy in some places and pleeeeeease, enough with erections at totally stupid times. Does this man have NO control at all!!!

I think my biggest disappointment was the ending. Could have been waaay more tastefully done. Considering the situation, it wasn't very classy. Oh well.

As I said. Just entertainment. A fun read delightly done that gives a giggle here and there and doesn't take serious thought.
Hey...it's a book!