Wife
Charlotte Mendelson
Pan MacMillan, 2024
Wife charts the beginning and eventual dissolution of the long relationship between Zoe Stamper and Penny Cartwright, both working as academics in London academia, Penny in literature and Zoe in classics.
They meet at a party – Penny is older, more established and impossibly glamorous to Zoe, who is quickly besotted by Penny’s charming façade. Penny is, however, living with another woman, Justine, and one of the early red flags of this relationship is how quickly Justine is shuffled out of the flat, but never entirely out of their new relationship.
As their relationship progresses, a central theme becomes Penny’s overwhelming desire to have children and the father that they choose is Justine’s domineering brother, with all possible boundaries breeched in the pursuit of Penny’s eventual goal.
Wife is written with a “then” and “now” structure, describing the beginning of the relationship and the steps along the way that lead to its destruction. Penny remains unchanged throughout – she is narcissistic and manipulative, regularly demonstrating her failure to protect Zoe or the relationship between them. She frequently calls upon “all her friends” to demonstrate the appropriateness of her extreme behaviour and marginalise Zoe’s feelings.
This toxic relationship is finely drawn, as Charlotte Mendelson observes the development of Zoe’s awareness of how damaged and damaging her lover is and how much of herself she has sacrificed in the pursuit of someone who mostly existed in her imagination.
As Zoe extricates herself and her children from this terrible marriage, Penny becomes increasingly dramatic and emotional, but this is who she always was – Zoe didn’t see it due to her love for her partner.
A highly engaging story that outlines the development of individual awareness and surviving a toxic marriage.
