Customer Reviews

The Good Wife Strikes Back

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This is the third Buchan novel I've read so it's time to confess I'm a fan, and I'm not just waving air. This is a particular kind of wit that was inspired earlier by Fay Weldon and Buchan has done more with it. Buchan's novels are irresistable and mighty tasty reads. There's wit aplenty and intelligence as well as a worldview of interest. This one, "The Good Wife" has to do with a loyal MP's wife who, 20 years down the marriage pike, has to reassess her existence, her life, her marriage. It's quite good indeed.

The other two Buchan books I enjoyed are: Revenge of the Middle-Aged Woman and Perfect Love, this latter could have been somewhat shorter (editors note same). Buchan writes entirely fine novels but I dislike her titles which probably help her to sell well so I should shut up. I think the titles diminish the literary quality of the novels which is high.

For some strange reason, Elizabeth Buchan's American publisher has chosen to ignore the fact that she is an award-winning, thoughtful author, and relegate her to the masses of romance novels. Hence the ridiculous title--after her last book, renamed "Revenge of the Middle-Aged Woman," do I detect a pattern here? Are American readers too lowbrow to choose a book unless it has a soap-opera title?

No matter. The book is lovely anyway, and more than it seems. It is the careful and often heart-tugging story of a marriage that is not exactly ordinary: Will is a British MP, and his wife Fanny, once a free spirit who ran a wine company with her father, is now the dutiful, adoring wife. Only it doesn't quite work out that way.

Over a series of years and overlapping time periods, we see how the marriage evolves from a crazy-in-love-at-first-sight honeymoon into a real relationship, with all the attendant baggage that comes with it. Will, to my mind, is the most self-centered human being one could imagine, I suppose like all politicians, and it is in his character that Buchan lets us down--I simply could not see why a strong, vibrant woman like Fanny would put up with him. This is explained to us in various months and years of Fanny's adaption to her political life, but it never quite makes sense.

Will's alcholic sister Meg moves in with the young couple almost immediately, and is horribly intrusive throughout the book, and yet the two woman have some strange and yet unmistakable bond. Meg's son Sacha appears at age 16, choosing to live with his mother, and so joins the household that already contains Will and Fanny's only daughter Chloe.

Fanny's father, a wonderful, robust, full-of-life transplanted Italian who loves his vineyard and his daughter with equal gusto, represents the other side of Fanny's character--and so we learn a great deal about her--if not her choices.

I notice that in this version of the book, the publisher took care to change Brit phrases like "jumper" into "sweater," but left "tights" alone. So for those readers who do not know, tights are pantyhose in Britain--it's impossible to imagine Fanny on one of her deadly boring political tea-drinking outings wearing American tights!

Another good book from Buchan--not her best, but well worth reading. Just put a brown paper bag over the title.

I picked this book up and started reading the first few pages and was hooked. It was readable and flowed smoothly, although the way Fanny knuckled under to everyone else's $hit irritated me. She plays like 2nd (or 3rd) fiddle in everybody's life and even though she sometimes complains, she never *does* anything about it. Then, just about the time she gets in a situation where she could empower herself and step out on her own, POOF! Several events occur that just sweep her problems right away. What was that? How did she strike back when she never changed as a person? Why have her get out of her predicament not under her own steam but be "rescued" by circumstances that change her life *for* her? It's almost like the author was given a contract that said, "You can't go over X amount of words," and she was thinking, "Oops, better end the book fast before I run over my quota!"

In sum, if ya wanna see a wife strike back, watch *The Little Foxes,* starring Bette Davis as a woman who knows what the word revenge means and takes it to new heights. Now there's a role model!

I also vote negative for the renaming of this book. It almost felt like predjuging an avarage American reader as incapable of raising interest in anything that does not include additional drama. Besides, there is very little drama going on between covers of this book so the change of it's title is completly unjustified.I've reached it's last page feeling unspeakably empty and knowing even less about Fanny Savage then when I started my reading. It's an easy but disappointing reading.

I thoroughly enjoyed "Revenge of the Middle-aged Woman" - finding it bittersweet but at the same time funny. Thus, I bought the newest book offered by Elizabeth Buchan and expected it to be as good as the previous. I was quite disappointed to find this newest rather shallow -never quite believing in the characters or the storyline. No part of the story was convincing and I forced myself to read to the end and then promptly pitched in the trash can at the airport - something I rarely do! It seemed that she had a contract deadline to fill and so it was written. I'm tired of falling for an author because of previous writing and getting cheated. I'll certainly be more careful next time!

I finished the book this morning, and I'm still waiting for the wife to 'strike back' . . . and she never does. She is a weak insipid character. During her 20 years of marriage she is a doormat to her MP hubbie - who cuts the honeymoon short due to work, isn't there when the daughter is born, asks his new bride if his alcoholic sister can stay with them for a few weeks - which turns into 20 years . . . you get the picture. So when "Fanny" finally gets some time to herself (after 20 years of thankless service to her husband and his political party) and goes to Italy for a few weeks, is this supposed to be the striking back part? Maybe British wives are more resigned to giving up their identity for the sake of the marriage - maybe they are just bloody fools. I don't know, but the book was a huge let down. The hubbie character of "Will" was not well flushed out, not well developed at all. . . don't waste your time with this one!

After throughly enjoying Revenge of the Middle-Aged Housewife I was very anxious to read this book. Largely it was disappointing. It was choppy, convoluted, and as one reader put it, the "good wife" did not strike back at all, but acquiesed to her rather annoying, boorish husband. I'll read Buchan again, but this was not one of her best.

i read 'revenge of the middle-aged woman' and thoroughly enjoyed it. This was also a good book although the title 'the good wife strikes back' is misleading. How did she strike back? She stayed with him (her husband) and didn't follow her chance of going back into the wine business. Maybe the 'new start' had this in mind but the reader i think is left in the dark almost although a sequel was planned.

This is a good read, in the chick-lit, post-40 genre, for a sunny afternoon in the garden but it isn't any more than that. If you like womens' magazine fiction, then you'll like this. The heroine has been put-upon for years, particularly with regard to sharing her home with her husband's sister, and the hangers-on from her husband's political life to which everything has been subordinated. She has a close relationship with her 18-year old daughter, parts of which were sheer fantasy (she bathes her in the bath and washes her hair - get real!) and is a nice, clear-headed and loyal person. The descriptions of the countryside, landscapes and villages of Italy are well done, and contrast well with the sheer dullness of English provincial life, conducted in uninteresting, ill-heated and dusty houses and bland towns. There's nothing large-scale in this book, no grand epiphany, no heroic passion, but a certain re-dressing of the balance in favour of our heroine, Fanny. Her values never waver, and we are left with the comfortable feeling that women are the glue that holds families together. Now have a cup of tea.

For almost two decades Fanny Savage has been the perfect political wife doing whatever her beloved Will needed. As she turns closer to fifty, Fanny knows she sacrificed her own needs to support whatever Will required of her as a spousal paragon. Will has become a British cabinet minister, but has higher aspirations.

As their only child graduates high school, Fanny feels a deep need to achieve self actuation as opposed to spousal actualization. Fanny is tired of Will's staff, cronies, and his older sister. She resents her lot in life, but partially blames herself for sheepishly quitting her father's wine business to become a full time model spouse. When her father dies, Fanny finds solace in the Italian town that she grew up in and decides the time is now even if it means leaving Will, who she admits she still loves. Since Fanny went to Italy to bring her father home, Will's life collapses as his sibling dies and he loses reelection, but what scares him most is Fanny not coming back.

Elizabeth Buchan provides a deep character study of a loyal woman finding no satisfaction doing the apparent right thing. Fanny is a fabulous protagonist as she loves her husband, but also begrudges that he and to her credit, she shares culpability for ignoring her dreams to achieve Will's aspirations. Though Will's fall from grace makes his concerns about Fanny much easier for him to ponder than if he continued to rise, fans will appreciate this delightful update of Ibsen's A Doll's House with the coming out of this middle aged woman, who simply wants a life of her own.

Harriet Klausner