17 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A Slapstick Tragedy, July 19, 2000
This review is from: My Wife's Last Lover (Paperback)
My Wife's Last Lover is the funny-sad story of Dan Weil, an unhappy
boy who runs away from home. Dan is not running away from his parents,
however. He's running away from his wife and kids. This boy is 44
years old.
Afraid to confront an indiscretion by his wife, Dan sets
off on a dark comedy of errors, fraught with one-liners and several
one-night stands. The trip takes readers across familiar territory,
but the humor and humanity of the ever-earnest narrator make it
fresh.
In his sexual fixation, Dan is like a Yuppie Portnoy, but
with a far guiltier conscience. In his isolation and alienation, he's
like a hip Herzog. In his misadventures as a sexual schlemiel, he
resembles Woody Allen. (The broccoli-in-the-briefs scene could've come
right out of "Everything You Always Wanted to Know about Sex (but
were afraid to ask)". In his incessant fantasizing, Dan sounds like
a Walter Mitty on the make.
This horny Hamlet is hardly a hero, but
he does provide a strong, distinctive narrative voice - always
amiable even when his character is less than admirable. Through him,
the author creates scenes that are, in turn, funny, poetic, crude,
powerful. His well-crafted prose is peppered with salty language and
tasty turns of phrase. ("Terrific sex, of course, never goes
unpunished." "Our eyes never met but I felt they had, as you see
light in a room after a lamp is shut." "Theirs was the perfect
Montclair marriage: liberal politics wedded to a liberal
income.")
He has a good eye for detail, often getting the
smallest details just right. His newsroom scenes, especially, ring
true. And, like a good journalist, he tries to be balanced in his
reporting from the sexual battlefield. He pulls no punches in
portraying wounded men venting frustration, bitterness, vulgarity,
even cruelty. But he also strives to present a woman's purview. They,
too, are seen in good, bad, and ugly lights. It can be extremely tough
for a male writer to walk a mile in a female character's shoes. Given
the balance he was going for, it was doubly important that the author
get the woman's perspective right. In this reviewer's opinion, he
largely succeeded.
Granted, one could easily make a case that the
narrator focuses his attention way too often on the female bosom -
though to many of the male Baby Boomers he's writing for, that hardly
seems possible. Many male boomers will find facets of Dan Weil's
experience we can well identify with - whether we might like to
admit it or not. The author succeeds all too well in evoking the
adolescent sex obsession (and rampant jealousy) that in many males
persists through middle age.
Boomer middle age is a main theme of
MWLL. Dan Weil is, in fact, going through a midlife crisis that he
mistakes for an existential crisis - or is it the other way
around?
The narrator seems not to know, and neither does the
reader. If Dan's "monstrous" actions stem from an existential
dilemma, then his experiences can be seen to touch on larger themes
- like man's search for meaning and the essential loneliness of
being human. If Dan's flight from family arises from midlife crisis,
then his misadventures are simply one more tale about "what a drag
it is growing old."
Or, maybe the two kinds of crisis amount to
much the same thing: Before a young man or woman gets to figure out
life's meaning, he or she wakes one morning to find themselves mired
in middle age, with the brightness, beauty and promise of youth
ineluctably over. Through no particular fault of our own, we must give
up youthful ways and seek meaning and satisfaction in new middle-aged
pursuits. Either that, or consign our remaining years to bitter
frustration.
Heavy stuff.
Martin Golan helps readers make this
heavy trip by way of a companionable narrator who is likable despite
his flaws. This Nowhere Man turned inside out knows not where he's
headed to, but he has quite opinionated points of view. And he
delivers some zingers. ("...public relations, which to
journalists is one notch above being a child pornographer."
This
loquacious lothario often spends more time talking about his emotions
than he does feeling them. He is too self-conscious by half. Though
Dan's narrative borders at times on solipsism, seen from another angle
it can pass as an authentic portrait of the "make-love-not-war"
generation.
For, at bottom, MWLL is a tale of war, and, in the end,
in the last few pages, a love story. In scene after scene, the strong
emotions of the battle between the sexes are played out in strident
black and white certainties. But, as in an actual military struggle,
right and wrong begin to blur, until gradually the battle lines become
buried beneath a shroud of weary gray. No winners, only survivors.
And it falls to the survivors to pick up the pieces (or to those
among them who are not irreparably damaged or terminally war
weary). This undefeated will to "strengthen the things that
remain" is what middle-aged love is all about. Maybe it is the only
love available to battle-scarred veterans of the sexual
revolution.
Dan Weil's newfound ability, toward the end of the book,
to examine the beam of wood in his own eye rather than the speck in
his neighbor's eye, is a simple bit of enlightenment. It is
nonetheless a hard-won epiphany that has eluded many of his baby
boomer brethren.
So, perhaps it should come as no surprise that the
denouement is emotionally muted. Although the final scene shed some
light on several plot elements, it is fraught with ambiguity;
poignant, yet not cathartic. In that, it may in fact be true to life
- or at least to the life of Dan Weil ("My whole life is a joke,
a cosmic goof, a slapstick tragedy.")
Some of us may have wished
for some resolution or transcendence from the characters' descent into
a state of love-as-war. But maybe that's another story - for
another generation to tell.
-- 30--30--30--
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12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Hysterically funny -- but it will also tear your heart out, May 1, 2001
This review is from: My Wife's Last Lover (Paperback)
I thought I'd have trouble with a book that starts off on the first page with a man walking out on his wife and two small children and I confess that I initially was put off by it. What kind of man does something like that? But after you get to know Daniel Weil you understand why he does what he does - how angry and hurt he is - as best as you can ever understand something like that.
It actually shows you how men think. I know, that's a scary thought! But it's also what makes the book so enjoyable. For a woman, this is very intriguing. I'm hard-pressed to think of another book that shines that sort of X-ray vision into men's minds, and what's behind the things they do that we women find so baffling. The best aspect of "My Wife's Last Lover" is how it brings alive those subtle interactions between men and women; that's something Martin Golan does as well as anybody I've ever read. He's especially good on the sexual things that are unspoken but everyone understands intuitively, like what those little gestures mean that say so much between men and women. And the writing is quite moving and beautiful, and spiced up with Daniel's constant wisecracks. Sometimes you feel like laughing and crying at the same time.
Daniel talks about his father's death, how he never fulfilled his ambitions in life, and how devastated he felt when he lost a job. I really understood the pain he felt - and the way that for a man these things are especially hurtful, like a loss of part of your identity. (He also says that men lose a part of their identity when they begin a serious long-term relationship with a woman - a very interesting thought.)
The office scenes are also very true-to-life. And a personal favorite that everyone could relate to when Daniel is invited for dinner at the apartment of a woman he works with. She wants a relationship. Daniel wants - well, you can guess what he wants. I really got a sense of how men think at times like that. I never really understood it before. It's hysterically funny - and it also tears your heart out, for both Daniel and poor Elaine, the woman he's with.
The last scene is particularly devastating and I promise will bring tears to your eyes.
I didn't know what kind of headline to write. But that's really it - a hysterically funny book that will tear your heart out.
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12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Marriage in Turmoil - Your Book Group will love it!, April 4, 2001
This review is from: My Wife's Last Lover (Paperback)
A marriage in turmoil, passionate love, fears about aging and life passing you by, a man's powerful love -- so powerful it scares him -- for his children and his wife, that's what "My Wife's Last Lover" is all about.
It was perfect book for my book group, and I highly recommend it for yours. We argued all night -- the issues it raises are the same man-woman issues everybody I know talks and argues about all the time at parties and in the kitchen. Who does more? Does he really care if she has the better job? Does he secretly want to be waited on hand and foot like his father was?
It's also a very funny book, and not particularly long (that's always important in my group!) You will laugh out loud many times, as Daniel stumbles through relationships he wishes he wasn't in, and fights his feelings about the one he wishes he was STILL in. We spent part of the evening just reading out loud our favorite lines. The only two men in the group defended Melissa and blamed Daniel for everything that goes wrong in their marriage (and there's a lot that goes wrong). The women found fault with Melissa. Anyway, I don't want to give away the plot, just to recommend it for a book group. We always have trouble finding good books, and this one really worked for us!
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