“Wolitzer has re-imagined the bitingly funny inner life of a female appendage to a Great Man. . . . When thisman says, ‘My wife is truly my better half,’ we find out how true it is.”

—The Boston Globe

“Meg Wolitzer has ripened into a chanteuse of a writer, a Dietrich of fiction; her smoky humor, her languidlook at life, her breathless sentences are all let loose a little more than usual in The Wife. . . . Wolitzer’s worldis John Updike’s world, but her writing is at once grittier and bigger. It’s hard to tell how old she is becauseshe writes with so little bitterness. I hope that The Wife might appeal to both men and women. It is as muchabout the male psyche as it is about the woman’s.”

—Los Angeles Times

“Here are three words that land with a thunk: gender, writing, and identity. Yet in The Wife, Meg Wolitzerhas fashioned a light-stepping, streamlined novel from just these dolorous, bitter-sounding themes. Maybethat’s because she’s set them all smoldering: rage might be the signature emotion of the powerless, but inWolitzer’s hands, rage is also very funny. . . . Wolitzer deploys a calm, seamless humor not found in herprevious novels. The jokes don’t barge in and tap us on the shoulder. Instead, they gradually accumulate,creating a rueful, sardonic atmosphere. . . . The book represents a real step forward for Wolitzer.”

—The New York Times Book Review

“The Wife isn’t just women’s lit with feminist issues. Deft and passionate, it raises questions about misguidedaims and the deals we make with ourselves and others to reach them.”

—Newsday

“There are women in New York City who would kill to be Joan Castleman, the narrator of Wolitzer’s frothynew comic novel. . . . [Wolitzer] paints an urbane picture of the book world of the ’50s and ’60s, when malewriters would put down their pens and use their fists. Her hilarious gripes about marriage make this tale apleasure best indulged in away from your better half.”

—People

“Meg Wolitzer’s sixth novel, The Wife, may be her boldest yet—an exploration of the passionate highs anddivorce-threatening lows of Joan and Joe Castleman’s forty-year marriage, delivered with signature wit,warmth, and a wise, woman’s-eye view.”

—Elle

“The Wife speeds along, glittering all the way, equal parts Jane Austen and Fran Lebowitz: epigrammatic,perceptive, ironic, smart, and ringing with truth. . . . [It] crackles with such intensity that it’s hard to putdown even for a few hours. . . . [Wolitzer] grabs hold of that brass ring of universal experience and takes us allalong for the carousel ride.”

—The Buffalo News

“A delicious read. . . . Philip Roth and John Updike have written tales like this, only we never hear the wife’sperspective. Wolitzer creates just the right voice for her overlooked heroine. She is at once witty and angry,bitter and tearful. . . . It is [Wolitzer’s] understanding of marriage that makes this tale such a deliciouspleasure.”

—The Cleveland Plain Dealer

“The Wife is a difficult book to put down, written with Wolitzer’s customary wit and verve.”—The Raleigh News & Observer

“Robustly satisfying . . . Wolitzer makes it easy and delicious to look, listen, and, ultimately, to judge. Thevicarious experience is great fun. . . . Wolitzer is a fine writer who just keeps getting better. She takes her time,allowing her characters to develop real heft as she guides us through the world of New York literary life. . . .Wolitzer manages to modernize her novel in the timeless way she presents marriage itself.”

—UPI (United Press International)

“The author’s observations are sharp, true, and unsparing. . . . The Wife is surprisingly brief and easy to readbut should be, perhaps not so surprisingly, long-lasting in its impact. Those echoes will continue off the page,raising again and again some profound old questions that still have all too few answers, for a long time tocome.”

—The Dallas Morning News

“Diabolically smart and funny . . . Wolitzer choreographs [Joan Castleman’s] ire into kung fu–precisionmoves to zap our every notion about gender and status, creativity and fame, individuality and marriage, deftlyexposing the injustice, sorrow, and sheer absurdity of it all.”

—Booklist

“A tale of witty disillusionment . . . Wolitzer’s crisp pacing and dry wit carry us headlong into a devastatingmessage about the price of love and fame. If it’s a story we’ve heard before, the tale is as resonant as ever inWolitzer’s hands.”

—Publishers Weekly

“[The Wife] features amazingly crafted prose. . . . Complete with a staggering twist ending, this is not one tomiss.”

—Library Journal

“A triumph of tone and observation, The Wife is a blithe, brilliant take on sexual politics and literary vanity(as well as sexual vanity and literary politics). It is the most engaging, funny, and satisfying novel the wittyMeg Wolitzer has yet written.”

—Lorrie Moore

“Meg Wolitzer’s sixth novel is her best—an astonishingly dry, funny, and gripping account of two writerstrapped for life in an evermore bizarre marriage. Every detail she evokes about an era in American literary life,from college campuses to writers’ parties, is persuasive, hilarious, and even frightening, while the indignationshe registers about her heroine’s predicaments is lightened and even liberated by her perfect comic timing.The Wife is a milestone in the career of one of her generation’s truest novelists.”

—Adam Gopnik

“The wife of The Wife is a brilliantly conceived character, smart and foolish, tough-minded and weak-willed,witty and profoundly sad. And Meg Wolitzer’s observations about gender and creativity: They are not onlypointed, but penetrating. She has written some fine novels, but this is her best yet!”

—Susan Isaacs

“How does Meg Wolitzer do it? Write those witty, deft, hilarious sentences that add up to so much tragicunderstanding of life? The Wife is a funny, sad, beautiful novel. Unforgettable.”

—Katha Pollitt

“Unflinching and acute, The Wife packs a ferocious punch. And that is before Wolitzer’s stunning twist ofan ending. If you’ve ever wondered what a female Philip Roth would write, here is the answer.”

—Stacy Schiff

“Funny, smart, sad, gripping, and utterly surprising. Meg Wolitzer’s subjects are the yin and yang of love andhate, and the various strange and shadowy transactions at the heart of a marriage—specifically a marriagebetween members of that cohort too young to snuggle easily into the certainties of the Greatest Generationand too old to catch feminism’s wave.”

—Kurt Andersen

“A complex, compelling portrait of a marriage that raises painful issues, even as it has you howling withrecognition.”

—Allison Pearson

About the Author

MEG WOLITZER is the author of five previous novels, including Surrender,Dorothy and This Is Your Life. Her short fiction has appeared in Best AmericanShort Stories and The Pushcart Prize. She lives in New York City with her husbandand sons.

ALSO BY MEG WOLITZER

Surrender, Dorothy

Friends for Life

This is Your Life

Hidden Pictures

Sleepwalking

The Position

The Ten-Year Nap

The Uncouping

The Interestings

Belzhar

The Female Persuasion

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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’simagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is

entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2003 by Meg Wolitzer

All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

First Scribner trade paperback edition 2004

SCRIBNER and design are trademarks of Macmillan Library Reference USA, Inc., used under license bySimon & Schuster, the publisher of this work.

Designed by Kyoko WatanabeCover art © 2018 Sony Picture Classics

The Library of Congress has cataloged the Scribner edition as follows:

Wolitzer, Meg.The wife: a novel/Meg Wolitzer.

p. cm.1. Authors’ spouses—Fiction. 2. Authorship—Collaboration—Fiction.

3. Fiction—Authorship—Fiction. 4. Married women—Fiction.5. Novelists—Fiction. I. Title.

PS3573.O564 W5 2003813'.54—dc21 2002036660

ISBN-13: 978-0-684-86940-7ISBN-10: 0-684-86940-3

ISBN-13: 978-0-7434-5666-1 (Pbk)ISBN-10: 0-7434-5666-1 (Pbk)

ISBN-13: 978-1-4165-8488-9 (eBook)

For Ilene Young