My Wife's Affair [Hardcover]

Nancy Woodruff (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 15, 2010

A smart, sexy novel about a woman's search for her former self on the London stage

Georgie and Peter, very much in love, move to London with their three children. Once there, Georgie's dormant acting career takes off and she wins the role of Dora Jordan in a one-woman show. Dora Jordan was the most famous comic actress of the eighteenth century (she had thirteen illegitimate children, including ten by the future king of England).

As Georgie rehearses for her part, she becomes increasingly drawn to Dora Jordan, who she sees as a working mother with struggles exactly like her own. And when Georgie can no longer fight her attraction to the playwright, she begins an affair with tragic results.

Narrated by Peter, a failed-writer-turned-businessman, My Wife's Affair is about infidelity, passion, duty, and about finally getting what you want and then wanting still more.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. Woodruff (Someone Else's Child) leaves not a dry eye in the house in this gripping ode to theater and the love it can command—and crush. Former actress turned restless suburban New Jersey mom-of-three Georgie and her journalist husband, Peter, transplant to London for Peter's new job. There, Georgie finds her way back to the theater and lands a role in a small one-woman production of Shakespeare's Woman, playing famous 18th-century British stage actress Dora Jordan. It's a part that consumes Georgie from the start, notes Peter, who achingly chronicles his wife's affair with her part and, eventually, with playwright Piers. Georgie's tour de force as Dora comes from her total recognition of the character—Two hundred years later and it's exactly the same thing, Georgie tells Piers—and her life as Dora and as Piers's lover begin to take precedence over her husband and children. Peter's excruciating autopsy of his crumbling marriage is unsparing and relentlessly punishing, but the kicker at the novel's end makes the adultery feel like a cozy little tea party. It's brutal and lovely. (Apr.)
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From Booklist

Woodruff, author of Someone Else’s Child (2000), soars in this searing chronicle of the dissolution of a marriage and a family. Transferred to London, journalist Peter Martin and his wife, former actress Georgie Connolly, grab at a chance to revitalize their lives after spending the last few years raising their three young sons in a drab New Jersey suburb. London seems like a dream come true to born and bred New Yorker Georgie, especially after she lands the role of a lifetime, playing eighteenth century actress Dora Jordan in a one-woman show by acclaimed playwright Piers Brighstone. As Georgie becomes inextricably involved in the play, the parallels between Dora’s life and her own become more and more compelling, distancing her from the husband and the children she loves. When Georgie’s obsession extends to Piers, the foundations of her life as a wife and a mother begin to crumble. Woodruff takes the unusual step of narrating the affair from Peter’s point of view, a choice that makes reading about it even more heartrending. The shocking twist at the conclusion of the book will leave stunned readers gasping for air. --Margaret Flanagan

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Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 18 and up
  
• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: Amy Einhorn Books/Putnam (April 15, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0399156291
• ISBN-13: 978-0399156298
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.4 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (23 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #477,581 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wow, my book group loved this book!!!, April 22, 2010

By 

Stephanie Margaret "Stephanie Margaret" (Manhasset, NY) - See all my reviews

This review is from: My Wife's Affair (Hardcover)

My book group intended to read another title but, when several of us couldn't get through that other choice, someone (having seen a glowing review of My Wife's Affair) suggested a last minute switch to this recently released gem. None of us needed more than 2 days to finish this book; none of us could put it down.

All 5 of us (4 women and 1 man) related to the compromises that both actor Georgie and writer Peter had made at the outset of parenthood, and to the pull to return to her art that Georgie feels once her 3 boys are placed in school, and she finds herself deliciously free and unencumbered in her new surrounds as an American expatriate in London.

Peter is also a sympathetic character, and for me it was his voice, as well as the powerful ending that will stay with me for years to come, his gorgeous wisdom and keen, lushly delivered observations that pulled so strongly at my heart, that convinced me that Woodruff has earned every point of each of her five stars.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Beautiful, realistic and ambiguous, April 20, 2010

By 

Reader x 3 - See all my reviews

This review is from: My Wife's Affair (Hardcover)

Nancy Woodruff has written a novel about adultery that begins as a story about a happy couple raising their children in suburban New York. From there their lives slowly veer off course. Told from the point of view of Peter, the husband and father, we hear first about how dedicated and loving Georgie is. She is an exemplary mother and clearly a MILF that Peter is lucky to have. We understand only too late how he does what he can to keep her happy, but we also find that he is destined to fail at holding their marriage together. The story progresses without melodrama. We learn the facts and later realize their significance. It is tragedy told from the point of view of someone who needs to make sense of the misery.

The story is real and sad, and I found myself feeling uncomfortable in parts because we see Georgie's mistake being made, we understand how it could happen and we despise ourselves for being a part of it. We won't let it happen again, but of course it does. When Peter discovers Georgie's betrayal we think we already know how it will end, but the knockout punch, quietly and expertly foreshadowed throughout the novel, took me by surprise.

After reading this book I find myself wondering who is the villain. It bothers me. Who are we supposed to blame? Perhaps this is the brilliance in the novel. Full of ripe and realistic characters in a situation that makes the reader uncomfortable, it has beauty alongside the sadness. It is worth a read, and then another.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Packs a Wallop, May 18, 2010

By 

R. McNamara (Culver City, CA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: My Wife's Affair (Hardcover)

I stormed through this book in a couple of days, I had to keep coming back to it. I was taken aback at first by the narrator-- his separation from the action (and his wife's consciousness) that he renders in such detail. But then I saw in him the frustrated writer filling in the blanks to further torture himself with a sordid blow-by-blow-- then ultimately, as the author of his own tragedy, in betraying the banality of it all, as against his marriage. My sympathies and allegiances were yanked all over the place, but the payoff left me with a deep forgiveness for human folly and longing, and a sober appreciation of all that can be lost and gained when weighing personal pride and hurt against the chance for redemption in love. Hats off to the author.