The Consul's Wife [Hardcover]

W. T. Tyler (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 1998

Tyler's most moving love story is set against the backdrop of revolution in Africa, the continent he knows best. His protagonist, Mathews, a young foreign service officer, must cope with embassy ineptitude even as he comes to terms with the confusion of feuding tribes and rebel factions.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Tyler, a former diplomat, has crafted a tale that is part political novel, part love story. Hugh Mathews, foreign service officer and self-described "diplomatic vagabond," is posted to the Congo in the early 1970s. There, he daily witnesses the disjunction between official pronouncements and conditions on the ground, his cynicism held in check only by an "intellectual relationship" with Blakey Ogden, the unhappy wife of the embassy consul. After their relationship deepens, Blakey leaves the Congo, eventually divorcing and beginning a new life. Years later, Hugh returns to Washington and again encounters Blakey. While the love story is the novel's heart, its soul lies in its sardonic description of American foreign policy and of diplomatic life in geopolitical backwaters. For popular collections.?Lawrence Rungren, Merrimack Valley Lib. Consortium, Andover, Mass.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews

Powerfully despairing, Graham Greenelike tale of romance and alienation in the blasted African bush, from our foremost chronicler of Washington's faceless bureaucracy and the lives it so blithely consumes (Last Train from Berlin, 1994, etc.). As the Vietnam War makes a mess of US foreign policy in Southeast Asia, footloose American foreign-service careerist Hugh Mathews finds himself transferred from Eden-like, pre-invasion Lebanon to a grim, gloomy diplomatic compound in the former Belgian Congo. A bachelor with little patience for political frippery (he likens diplomacy to ``an old whore trying to remember when she'd been a virgin''), he's resigned to terminal futility--until he falls for Blakely Ogden, the bronzed, blond wife of the embassy's insipid consul, Jeffrey. Childless and stifled by a loveless marriage, Blakely confides her fascination with tribal masks and other artifacts of African culture. Hoping to experience something more than the sublime ennui of diplomatic protocol, and perhaps discover some interesting antiques for his friend, Mathews begins to run pointless errands in the blighted, inhospitable countryside with fellow loner Ken McAuliffe, a burned-out idealist who ``like most incorrigibly honest people, had no sense of the mystery in himself.'' After a passionate affair with Mathews, Blakely flees her lover and her husband, leaving no forwarding address. Then McAuliffe quits the service and is blown to bits by a land mine while helping refugees escape, and Mathews finds himself banished for his misdemeanors- -among them the discovery that his local drinking buddies are outlaw revolutionaries. He ends up back in Washington with a dull desk job. Overwhelmed by a life of so much futility, Mathews is suddenly reborn when he stumbles on Blakely again. Together, the two finally experience what passes for contentment in the rustic Virginia woods. Thick with bilious resentment and impotent rage: a trenchant, eloquently crafted drama of lost souls who find salvation where they least expect it. -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 216 pages
• Publisher: Henry Holt & Co; 1st edition (January 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0805044256
• ISBN-13: 978-0805044256
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.8 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,585,504 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Intoxicating - An Africa that never leaves us, February 2, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The Consul's Wife (Hardcover)

Tyler obviously spent time as a Foreign Service Officer. Having spent several years in Africa in the FS as well, this book brought back many memories and yearnings to return. Once Africa gets under your skin, there is an indescibable yearning to return. I was particularly captured in the first two pages of the book with his description of the storm and the magic. I could almost hear the Wood Dove in the background and the crack of lightening against the granite kopjes. From an old AF hand, an excellent read, written by someone who really experienced it and understood.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Excellent, May 4, 2000

By 

A. Ross (Washington, DC) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Consul's Wife (Hardcover)

This portrait of a young, single US foreign service officer serving in pre civil-war Lebanon, the Congo, and then just pre-civil war Sudan is dead on in capturing a certain type. Tyler served in the foreign service himself (a milieu I grew up in), and his description of the diplomatic life is perhaps the best I've read. Most of the book is spent in the Congo, and Tyler does an excellent job showing how Hugh Mathews is totally affected by his travels through the back country. He is outsider to the stuffy suited men who mostly stay in within the safe confines of embassy life. His life is given meaning through a frenetic affair with the wife of the embassy's consul. When she leaves, he drifts through a few empty years in Sudan and Washington, going through the motions. He gains a second chance at the end, with plausibly subdued results. It all rings very very true and is presented in well-crafted prose.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars A major disappointment, January 25, 2010

By 

Gretchen Krantz Evans (Accra, Ghana) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Consul's Wife (Hardcover)

I currently live in Africa and have spent time here during two tours in the foreign service. I found this book extremely disappointing. Try as I might, I never actually liked any of the characters, least of all the protagonist. Tyler never actually permits any of this characters to undergo development; the moment you meet them they are automatically tarred with whatever brush he paints them with and in a paragraph or less we know the failures, character flaws and shortcomings of a particular player. There are times when Tyler paints a beautiful picture of the African bush with his words, but most often he focuses on Mathews' thoughts, which hold him derisively above the entire supporting cast of the book, with the exception of the object of his affection. In my experience, embassy life is a bit more complex, and people who are in the foreign service even more so - making an outright judgement is not only incorrect, but in a book quite uninteresting, especially when it's not undone in a surprise twist or even questioned.

Billing it as a love story confused me too. You never really get a sense of affection between Mathews and Blakey. Mathews is the Ultimate User in behavior and his love and desperation to keep her at the end came on too quickly and was something I found unbelievable. Tyler foists the "emancipation myth" stereotype on Blakey, but I really struggled to understand that in the context of what came across as a very cold relationship of convenience in most of the writing.

I was excited to find a book on Embassy life - they can be too few and far between - but I would not recommend this to anyone as an accurate account or even an interesting novel.