60 of 61 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Thoroughly British, Smart, and Witty, March 8, 2003
This review is from: Revenge of the Middle-Aged Woman (Hardcover)
Elizabeth Buchan's book REVENGE OF THE MIDDLE-AGED WOMAN is about the destruction and ultimate resurrection of a single life. At the start of the book, Rose Lloyd's life appears idyllic. Married to Nathan for twenty-five years, she has concurrently raised a son and a daughter, forged a career as a book critic and editor, and kept a beautiful home. Life is comfortable, easy and lovingly predictable. She feels blessed by the ease with which her days pass. Whether she is tending her garden or dining out with colleagues, Rose is grounded and at peace.
But then one day, forty-pushing-fifty Nathan comes home and announces out of the blue that he wants out of their comfortable, easy, predictable existence. He uses the oldest cliché in the book: he has found love, or at least lust, with a younger woman. And, ouch, the younger woman is a good friend of Rose's. As if this devastation is not enough, a waterfall of catastrophic events happens in quick succession, sending Rose over the edge. She loses her job, a beloved pet dies, a child marries while in another country and her mother becomes ill. Buchan hits every potential nerve, leaving readers raw from the emotional barrage.
Rose sinks to the greatest depths of depression, drinking too much, eating too little and sleeping too much. Buchan spends many pages expertly plumbing the recesses of a devastated psyche and, for anyone who has ever experienced such grand and vast loss, Rose's self-questioning, self-hatred and self-abuse will be all too familiar.
As low as Rose sinks, ultimately, REVENGE OF THE MIDDLE-AGED WOMAN is about resurrecting one's life from the unrecognizable heap of self that is left after loss --- and resurrect she does. Buchan never fails to write without great wit and Rose never loses sight of the irony of life. She rises a newer, sleeker model, armed with the knowledge that 1) she can carry on and 2) "it took so little to destroy someone." Poised by book's end to rekindle an old passion, Rose truly embodies the Spanish proverb "living well is the best revenge."
Thoroughly British, smart and witty, REVENGE OF THE MIDDLE-AGED WOMAN will have you crying and laughing as Rose roller-coasters through the dissolution of her marriage and an inspirational renewal.
--- Reviewed by Roberta O'Hara
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68 of 73 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Brit Best-Seller Well Worth the Read, August 12, 2003
This review is from: Revenge of the Middle-Aged Woman (Hardcover)
Please ignore the silly title when considering this book. Its author, Elizabeth Buchan, is highly popular in the UK, where she is a reviewer for several newspapers. I had the pleasure of reviewing her two previous books that were released in this country: Perfect Love, a truly brilliant work; and Consider the Lily, which I did not like at all.
After a hiatus of several years (at least in the U.S.), we now have the treat of "Revenge of the Middle-Aged Woman," which concerns a well-to-do UK couple who both work for a prominent newspaper: he as a business manager, she as the head of the book review department. Nathan and Rose, a modern, undowdy couple, have been married many years, and are happily settled into middle age. They have two children in their twenties, an elderly cat, a beautiful garden (product of Rose's long obsession) and a house that has sheltered them throughout their lovely lives.
All is fine until Rose is blindsided by a sudden announcement: Nathan has somebody else and wants out. As a bewildered and devastated Rose faces that fact, she also learns in rapid succession that the other woman is someone she knows well-and that her own cherished job may be in as much danger as her marriage.
Rose's reaction to this upheaval in her life is predictable but different. So many hundreds of books have been written on this same subject that it is very hard to keep one's sympathy and attention. But Rose is not a whiner. And Rose is not a quitter. And above all, Rose, who is devastated but not broken, is a realist. How she copes with the blows that come her way is an inspiration to those of us who may have been in the same position, or who may be so in the future. At the very least, it's a good old-fashioned story for our times. At best, it's a wonderful model of how to be. No wonder this was a best-seller in Britain. It should be here as well.
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44 of 46 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Sweet and Satisfying Read, March 29, 2003
This review is from: Revenge of the Middle-Aged Woman (Hardcover)
I loved this book! In Revenge of the Middle-Aged Woman author Elizabeth Buchan has given us a new heroine to love; confident, comfortable, charming and successful forty-eight year old Rose. Although we meet her on the eve of her undoing (at the hands of her convincingly conniving husband- and job-stealing assistant), Rose is no hand-wringing cliche of the wife-done-wrong. Instead our Rose navigates her new, and painful world with the grace, dignity and class we all wish we could muster when things come undone in our lives. Rose is not destroyed by her suffering, she is transformed in a deeply satisying and understandable way. I especially recommend this book for the quality of the writing which was consistently exquisite from page one through the final chapter.
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