Customer Reviews

The Wives of Bath

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Real estate wizard Hugo Fine and his wife Amanda attend birthing class only to encounter Amanda's nemesis, Alice, and Alice's husband Jake. The expectant mothers had met previously when they worked for an American magazine and thoroughly despised each other. The hatred does not abate during the prenatal course. The couples' differences are summed up in their birthing plans. Jake, editor of the environmental magazine Get Trashed, and Alice expect to deliver at home, complete with whale music and birthing pool. Amanda is opting for first-class delivery all the way, including an elective Caesarean at the most exclusive hospital.

Amanda's plans are all for naught when she goes into labor early, and the high-class hospital refuses to admit her. She ends up at the public hospital, protesting, "I'm too posh to push." But push she does.

Meanwhile, Alice also has gone into labor and her all-natural home birth plans are not going smoothly. The birthing pool is not put together. Jake struggles at length to assemble it. But while he's still deciphering the instructions, news comes that the midwives aren't available. Amazingly, Alice's insurance from her old job still covers her --- and lands her at the exclusive hospital Amanda had yearned for. So off the two environmentalists go, in the hospital limousine. Hugo runs into Jake at the fancy hospital after Amanda demands to convalesce there. In spite of common ground, the two new fathers continue to detest each other.

When the babies come home, it's still rough sailing for both couples, and their lives continue to intertwine in unexpected ways. Becoming parents intensifies the personalities of all four, and actually sets frivolous Hugo on a sweetly redemptive path. In fact, THE WIVES OF BATH is truly Hugo's story. The book honors his transformation, which was splendid.

Descriptions of Jake and Alice recycling toilet paper tubes as napkin holders, calling the worm hotline when their garbage-recycling worms prove to be anorexic, and serving lentil soup in recycled cottage cheese containers are hilarious, as are some of Hugo's antics as he learns to be a good father. Although Amanda is so constantly a horror that the reader wonders why Hugo stays with her for ten minutes, never mind marrying her and having a baby with her, it's all in good (sometimes, very black) fun.

This was not the superficial silliness I somehow expected from the book cover, but rather a thoroughly enjoyable read that managed to be wickedly funny, surprisingly sad, and had a few startling twists in the tale. Now that I've discovered this author, I'll definitely search out her other books.
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Most chick-lit revolves around young singles trying to find their perfect someone. This book, however, delves into new parenthood and the challenges surrounding it. I thought this book was very well written, funny, poignant, and captivating. I couldn't wait to pick it up each night. If you want a good story to get caught up in, I highly recommend this one!

Wendy Holden's The Wives of Bath follows the parallel lives of two expecting couples from the pre-natal class the four adults attend together through the marital rifts that grow up during their babies' first years. The females of the foursome, Alice and Amanda, were acquainted with one another pre-pregnancy: their mutual animosity sets the tone in turn for their husband's dislike of one another.

Former career-woman Alice, impregnated by and quickly wed to her one-afternoon-stand Jake, is a likeable, accomplished woman, but she suppresses her own interests and personality to live up to her handsome new husband's demanding expectations: Jake is an extreme environmentalist who goes to absurd lengths to minimize his family's impact on the environment, using colanders salvaged from the dump as lampshades, for example, and (unrealistically, I should think) refashioning the metal from spiral notebooks into coat hangers. His plans for Alice's upcoming childbirth--to be endured without benefit of anesthesia, of course--approach the barbaric. Amanda, on the other hand, roughly Jake's opposite on the eco-conscious spectrum, is a self-absorbed careerist for whom family is hardly a priority: she plans to use her baby as a fashion accessory, and to use her husband Hugo as the baby's primary caregiver. Amanda has carefully plotted out her own childbirth, from scheduled elective cesarean to live-in maternity nurse. But all laid plans being, as we know, subject to fickle fortune, neither Jake's nor Amanda's visions of their birth experiences quite work out. Nor do their respective marriages thrive in the sleep-deprived months to follow, when disagreements over the division of labor in their households inevitably arise.

The Wives of Bath is a diverting romantic comedy that hits a few new-parenthood nails squarely on the head. The book can boast of some nice writing, and it is for the most part carefully plotted. The problem is that the characters of Jake and Amanda are far too over-the-top to be credible, the near-abusive Jake nothing more than the caricature of an eco-fanatic, while Amanda is, as the author puts it, the personification of a "baby-hating career bitch." ("What do I care about some effing celebrity kids?" she spits at Alice. "Or any kids, come to that? Kids, schmids. Anyone who has them deserves all they've got coming to them.") No one short of Cruella de Ville is this unabashedly nasty. One can also fault the book for the deus ex machina that arrives at the book's end to resolve the problems between Jake and Alice.

The Wives of Bath is far from perfect, but if you're looking for a light, quick read, you might grab this one.

Reviewed by Debra Hamel, author of Trying Neaira: The True Story of a Courtesan's Scandalous Life in Ancient Greece

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I laughed out loud so often. I was gobb smacked a few times and I groaned "oh no your kidding". I was fully engrossed and loved the light fast pace. The recycling addicted husband over the top but some people are over the top in real life and I just laughed and cringed at him.

Anyone Pregnant or with an under 5yr old will love this. I'm 51 and loved it and my kids have long gone, but we do remember toddler stage.

I have listened to this Audio about 6 times over the past 7 years and I get it out and listen again and again.

I didn't think I was going to like this book as much as I did. I almost put it down after the first few chapters because some of the characters were SO unlikeable and one dimensional it was unbearable. Luckily, in the second half of the book, those horrible characters play a small role and Alice and Hugo become more rounded out and seem more believable. The main flaw of this book is that the characters - particularly Amanda and Jake - are caricatures. It is hard to believe that anyone behaves like they do (at least I hope not). Alice and Jake's relationship is also unbeleivable, particularly since Alice had started off as a well groomed lawyer in New York. It is hard to picture her with a guy like Jake, who is nasty, controlling, and has horrendous hygeine. If she was a successful lawyer before her pregnancy and marriage, it seems unlikely that she was such a naive pushover. Amanda and Hugo's relationship is more believable - even though Amanda is a nasty person, Hugo doesn't start off so great either.

Overall, the story line becomes predictable in the second half. However, as the characters become more likeable the predictability is easily forgiven. In the end, I enjoyed the story and I was not sure I would even finish it based on the first third of the book!

Wendy Holden, in my opinion, tends to write over the top chick lit.

This one is no exception. The storyline is about two couples who meet in prenatal classes and the story of what happens to their relationships when their children are born.

The whole storyline is farfetched and completely unrealistic. Particularly when we read about Jake and his wife Alice. Jake has become obsessed about living a frugal lifestyle to the point where he expects his wife to recycle toilet paper (and other stuff) We discover that he is not capable of being a good husband and father.

The other couple Hugo and Amanda are polar opposites from Jake and Alice, but these two also have a horrible relationship and the author overdoes it with the Amanda character big time.

You just know that somehow, these couples will not remain together but you can see the end a mile away.

There is nothing new here. The storyline is cute if not ridiculous and if you can hold your disbelief, then buy this book. If you are the kind of reader who likes your storyline to be realistic then stay very far away from this one.

This is not your typical Wendy Holden novel. All of your favorite characters are not in this book, and the story line is in a different vein than her other novels. None-the-less it is a wonderful story and worth the read.

The Wives of Bath is about two couples that are pregnant and having babies at the same time. The trials of new families and working parents. The characters are funny and loving. It is amazing how Wendy has you falling for characters that you thought you never would. Enjoy the journey of these struggling British families and love Wendy's corky writing.

I really enjoyed Wendy Holden's first three books (Simply Divine, Bad Heir Day, and Farm Fatale) for their witty language and sharp plot twists, but I couldn't get into Azur Like It. The Wives of Bath, while readable, does not measure up to Holden's earlier works.

It feels as if Holden is going through the motions here. This is the story of two couples who each have a baby: Alice, a downtrodden lawyer, and Jake, her environmentalist husband; Hugo, a dashing real estate agent, and his domineering wife, Amanda. The two couples are part of the same prenatal class at the hospital.

Hugo and Alice are well-developed as characters, but their spouses are empty types. Jake is obsessed with recycling, to the point that he gets all his clothes from the local dump, uses colanders for lamp shades and "loos" for garden planters. Amanda is a self-obsessed "career woman" who complains about balancing her work life and home life, although Hugo is the only one who takes care of their baby.

The ending is completely predictable. A four-year-old could correctly forecast which two people will end up together.

Holden does make some observations about the difficulty a man has raising a child alone, in terms of juggling work, daycare and social expectations, but that's really nothing new...the subject was addressed in the movie "Mr. Mom" back in the '80s.

Reading The Wives of Bath is like eating a candy bar that isn't your favorite; it's fine while you're reading it -- entertaining enough -- but after you're done, you're still unsatisfied. The characters are a little too extreme (the environmentalist is way over the top with his reusing prophylactics, the magazine writer a little too self-absorbed to be real), the situations beyond contrived. Nonetheless, it's not the worst way to spend an afternoon -- provided you really have nothing better to do.

The characters are all incredibly annoying. One is an extreme environmentalist and his wife goes along with his lifestyle mainly because he is so gorgeous. Which says much about her IMO. The other couple consists of a bitch on wheels and an incompetent husband. He doesn't know how to put a diaper on his son - for 5 freaking months. Unless he in on the spectrum, there isn't any explanation for this.

But I kept on reading because I usually finish books I start and because I was mildly interested in finding out who ends up with whom. The references about breastfeeding kept bugging me as well; if it hurts that much, if your nipples are raw, and if it take still ages to feed at four months, it might have been a good idea to contact a lactation consultant or get in touch with LaLeche League. One should think that professionals, ones who lived in big cities at some point, would have heard of breastfeeding assistance.

But the last straw came on page 159 when the author writes about one of the babies being miserable at daycare. The character (the one who lives like a martyr) tells the dad who is clueless that his son is only trying to manipulate him when he cries at drop-off. She reinforces this by saying the proof in that lies that when a baby cries and you come, s/he stops. So rather than calling out to have a need met (hunger, dirty bum, loneliness, discomfort, pain etc.), those babies just want to manipulate us. What drivel.

Thank goodness I only loaned this book from the library.