Review by Nicky Pellegrino
Tweeting, Facebook
statue updates, emails, texts, Google searches, online chat…if you’re going to
set a novel right now can you ignore the electronic litter of everyday life?
Probably not. So the challenge is to find a way to fit modern communications into
a narrative without it feeling clunky. Or to use them boldly as a device to
drive your story forward. In Wife 22 (HarperCollins, $34.99) US author Melanie Gideon does the latter,
mostly with aplomb.
This is the story of a marriage gone stale.
Alice Buckle has been with her advertising executive husband William for 20
years, has two kids and a bad case of ennui. That’s one of the reasons she ends
up secretly taking part in an anonymous online marriage survey. At first it
seems like a harmless diversion but the questions that come from the researcher
force her to look back over her life and re-evaluate it.
A frustrated
playwright whose kids are growing up, Alice is at the age her mother was when
she died and is feeling vulnerable. Her husband has lost his job, she thinks
her son is gay and worries her daughter is anorexic. Encouraged by the
researcher, she gives increasingly detailed responses to the marriage survey
questions. She writes of her and William’s courtship, the birth of her
children, her great professional failure.
It’s been a long
time since anyone has paid her so much attention or cared to hear of her hopes
and regrets. Inevitably, Alice forms a bond with her researcher. She friends
him on Facebook, finds herself flirting with him, even makes plans to meet.
There’s a twist in
the tale that I expect you’ll see coming from pages away but still I’m not
going to spoil it.
Wife 22 has already been optioned by Working Title Films – who made Bridget Jones’ Diary – and in fact, has
been widely compared to Helen Fielding’s bestseller. I found it
painfully contemporary at times. I’m not convinced Gideon needed to festoon
the story with quite so many status updates, text spellings or sections written
like scenes from plays. It makes for a jerky sort of read.
That said it is
amusing, inventive, thoughtful and an enjoyable read on the whole. Gideon’s
technique of giving us Alice’s responses to the researcher, but not the
original questions, keeps things intriguing. And there’s a good support cast of
characters from Alice’s gay best friend Nedra to her quirky son Peter.
If it was time for
chick lit to get a makeover then Gideon has done an enthusiastic job of it. Wife 22 is completely “of the moment”
despite its themes being timeless ones - the difficulties of keeping a marriage
interesting, the pitfalls of parenthood etc.
If you don’t have
a Facebook profile or Twitter account you might struggle to make sense of the
book at times. Even for keen social networkers I’d say there’s a limit to how
much of this stuff can be tolerated within the pages of a novel. It may be
fresh right now but it could get old really quickly….
Footnote:
Footnote:
No comments:
Post a Comment