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Wife
'A master at family drama' – The Times
'One of the funniest writers in Britain' – The Guardian
Set in the world of London academia, both past and present, Wife by Charlotte Mendelson is heart-breaking and funny, profound and gripping, as it takes the reader from the end of a relationship to its beginning, and back again.
When Zoe moves in with Penny, their relationship looks perfect; after all, everyone wants a wife. But this is the story of how love can become a disaster . . .
Zoe Stamper, junior researcher in Ancient Greek Tragedy, meets fellow academic Dr Penny Cartwright at a faculty flute recital. Dr Cartwright seems impossibly glamorous to Zoe, who is, after all, several rungs down the academic pecking order - and a nervous ingénue as far as Penny’s sophisticated circle is concerned. But Penny leaves Zoe a cryptic note, and a passionate affair ensues . . .
Once Penny confesses all to her live-in lover, Justine, their happiness seems assured. But there is something else Penny needs as badly in her life as Zoe’s adoration, and thus the beginning of their affair might also have signalled its end . . .
'One of the funniest writers in Britain' – The Guardian
Set in the world of London academia, both past and present, Wife by Charlotte Mendelson is heart-breaking and funny, profound and gripping, as it takes the reader from the end of a relationship to its beginning, and back again.
When Zoe moves in with Penny, their relationship looks perfect; after all, everyone wants a wife. But this is the story of how love can become a disaster . . .
Zoe Stamper, junior researcher in Ancient Greek Tragedy, meets fellow academic Dr Penny Cartwright at a faculty flute recital. Dr Cartwright seems impossibly glamorous to Zoe, who is, after all, several rungs down the academic pecking order - and a nervous ingénue as far as Penny’s sophisticated circle is concerned. But Penny leaves Zoe a cryptic note, and a passionate affair ensues . . .
Once Penny confesses all to her live-in lover, Justine, their happiness seems assured. But there is something else Penny needs as badly in her life as Zoe’s adoration, and thus the beginning of their affair might also have signalled its end . . .
358 pages, Kindle Edition
Published August 8, 2024
About the author
Charlotte Mendelson
16 books103 followersCharlotte Mendelson (born 1972) is a British novelist and editor. Her maternal grandparents were, in her words, "Hungarian-speaking-Czech, Ruthenian for about 10 minutes, Carpathian mountain-y, impossible to describe", who left Prague in 1939.
When she was two, she moved with her parents and her baby sister to a house in a cobbled passage next to St John's College, Oxford, where her father taught public international law.
After the King's School, Canterbury,she studied Ancient and Modern History at the University of Oxford, even though she knows now, with great regret, that what would have suited her best was English literature at somewhere like Leeds.
She says she became a lesbian suddenly. "It was boyfriends up to 22 or 23. Not a whiff of lesbianism. Not even a thought. But I'm very all or nothing. It was all that, and now it's all this. There was about a 10-minute cross-over period of uncertainty, but it was really not that bad."
She has two children with the journalist and novelist Joanna Briscoe.
She won the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize in 2003 and the Somerset Maugham Award in 2004 for her second novel Daughters of Jerusalem. She was shortlisted for the Sunday Times 'Young Writer of the Year Award in 2003.She contributes regularly to the TLS, the Guardian, the Independent on Sunday and the Observer. She is an editor at the publishers Headline Review. She was placed 60th on the Independent on Sunday Pink List 2007
When she was two, she moved with her parents and her baby sister to a house in a cobbled passage next to St John's College, Oxford, where her father taught public international law.
After the King's School, Canterbury,she studied Ancient and Modern History at the University of Oxford, even though she knows now, with great regret, that what would have suited her best was English literature at somewhere like Leeds.
She says she became a lesbian suddenly. "It was boyfriends up to 22 or 23. Not a whiff of lesbianism. Not even a thought. But I'm very all or nothing. It was all that, and now it's all this. There was about a 10-minute cross-over period of uncertainty, but it was really not that bad."
She has two children with the journalist and novelist Joanna Briscoe.
She won the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize in 2003 and the Somerset Maugham Award in 2004 for her second novel Daughters of Jerusalem. She was shortlisted for the Sunday Times 'Young Writer of the Year Award in 2003.She contributes regularly to the TLS, the Guardian, the Independent on Sunday and the Observer. She is an editor at the publishers Headline Review. She was placed 60th on the Independent on Sunday Pink List 2007
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 33 reviews
August 9, 2024
If you ever wanted to revisit a toxic relationship you’ve been in because you miss the gaslighting and manipulation, or you’ve never been in a toxic relationship and, for some perverse reason, you want to know what it’s like, read this book, I guess.
August 31, 2024
I've read interviews where Mendelson talks about finally writing lesbian characters in her latest novel. What a shame she's created a cast of hapless, pathetic, conniving, monsters. All.
She appears to hate everyone and everything.
Giving up on 30%.
Life's too short to read toxicity.
She appears to hate everyone and everything.
Giving up on 30%.
Life's too short to read toxicity.
September 10, 2024
Coercive control, bullying, age gap relationships and gaslighting - for a change this is not in a heterosexual relationship. I listened and read from the library and was impressed with the actor. The book is written from Zoe’s POV and although I could identify with her negative experiences with the very dominant Penny, I did find her infuriating at times. Mendelson cleverly lets the reader see what is happening before Z does and one of the key quotes is ‘There are unreliable narrators in real life, not only in fiction’. Some of the plot mirrors the author’s own experience and shows how the NHS and other authorities are too busy seeing this situation as cool and interesting to realise the truth. One bit I did find unrealistic was the sessions with the ever available GP. The fact that Zoe’s parents mirrored hers and Penny’s is subtly done. At times P is too awful and I was always hoping for some redeeming qualities. There are classical and academic references that some readers will appreciate, such as ‘the Greek trick’ and the author Christina Steed, who was resurrected by Virago in their early days. CM has a wonderful way with words and uses lists in a witty and clever manner. I liked the Big Brother like clock and the ‘then’ and ‘now’ timelines. There is rather too much detail but I found it a compelling story and was thankful that zoe learned that the best way to deal with a person like Penny is to pretend her ears are ‘sealed over’. Looking at GR a lot of readers are upset by the theme of toxic relationships but I admire the writer for tackling it.
I had a bizarre experience in our public library. A woman was taking out this book so I said it was a different take on a toxic relationship as it featured a lesbian couple. She blushed and giggled hysterically saying she had no idea and only picked it because it came up on her phone. Obviously wished she hadn’t. This is Croydon 2024!
I had a bizarre experience in our public library. A woman was taking out this book so I said it was a different take on a toxic relationship as it featured a lesbian couple. She blushed and giggled hysterically saying she had no idea and only picked it because it came up on her phone. Obviously wished she hadn’t. This is Croydon 2024!
August 21, 2024
A Masterpiece of Storytelling.
This is the tale of Zoe, a hapless young academic caught in an abusive relationship. We are carried along on a wave of gaucheness , self abasement, and uncertainty as she struggles to exert control over her life and career. In many ways this is a depressing tale, as the subtle manoeuvrings of the abuser are cleverly exposed. Gender seems irrelevant: these methods are pretty universal. However Charlotte Mendelson wickedly leavens all this gloom with her usual sprinklings of humour and irony, taking delight in puncturing the pomposity of the middle classes, and the world of academia. All in all this novel was great fun, in spite of its depressing theme, and (spoiler alert) I was greatly cheered that the abuser and her allies got their comeuppance in the end.A Masterpiece of storytelling.
This is the tale of Zoe, a hapless young academic caught in an abusive relationship. We are carried along on a wave of gaucheness , self abasement, and uncertainty as she struggles to exert control over her life and career. In many ways this is a depressing tale, as the subtle manoeuvrings of the abuser are cleverly exposed. Gender seems irrelevant: these methods are pretty universal. However Charlotte Mendelson wickedly leavens all this gloom with her usual sprinklings of humour and irony, taking delight in puncturing the pomposity of the middle classes, and the world of academia. All in all this novel was great fun, in spite of its depressing theme, and (spoiler alert) I was greatly cheered that the abuser and her allies got their comeuppance in the end.A Masterpiece of storytelling.
August 14, 2024
Wow. Painfully incredible.
October 8, 2024
In The Exhibitionist, Mendelson has Ray Hanrahan the artist as a monster with the rest of the family collaborating and allowing him to behave in ways which were despicable and cruel. In Wife, Mendelson has Penny, wife to Zoe, as a monster who sucks the life out of everything, being beautiful, popular and clever but who at home is controlling and emotionally blackmailing and shaming out with friends.
Penny is older than Zoe, who is a little naive, with the two meeting at work. Zoe is swept off her feet and pays little attention to Justine who she replaces, where she lives and how she dresses. It turns out that none of these traits are to Penny's liking and so over time Zoe changes although finds aspects uncomfortable - as do we the reader. Eventually they want children, well Penny does, and so they set off searching for a sperm donor and struggle, ending up with Justine's brother Robert willing to donate but also be involved in his child's life. There is a second child with Zoe as the mother and complicated rights to who has the child, when and for how long with Robert having as much time as the mothers.
But when in a relationship do you start to realise that it is over? Is it when your secrets are broadcast to your wife's friends at a party, is it when she demands that you dress in a certain way or that your children are unhappy and showing it in antisocial ways? In some ways there is an element of complicity in the story until Zoe decides to leave. We then get endless tears and tantrums from Penny which just goes on and on and I did skip over part of these finding them just too tedious. There is only so much emotional blackmail that this reader can take before becoming bored. I did want to shake Zoe at this stage but of course, this was the love of her life and the children were being used as chess pieces in the messy game of divorce with Justine and Robert as part of the process.
Was it the same story as The Exhibitionist? The characters have changed and it isn't a gay relationship at the heart of the story but, other than that, much is similar. Mendelson is obviously making a study of how badly people can behave within relationships.
Penny is older than Zoe, who is a little naive, with the two meeting at work. Zoe is swept off her feet and pays little attention to Justine who she replaces, where she lives and how she dresses. It turns out that none of these traits are to Penny's liking and so over time Zoe changes although finds aspects uncomfortable - as do we the reader. Eventually they want children, well Penny does, and so they set off searching for a sperm donor and struggle, ending up with Justine's brother Robert willing to donate but also be involved in his child's life. There is a second child with Zoe as the mother and complicated rights to who has the child, when and for how long with Robert having as much time as the mothers.
But when in a relationship do you start to realise that it is over? Is it when your secrets are broadcast to your wife's friends at a party, is it when she demands that you dress in a certain way or that your children are unhappy and showing it in antisocial ways? In some ways there is an element of complicity in the story until Zoe decides to leave. We then get endless tears and tantrums from Penny which just goes on and on and I did skip over part of these finding them just too tedious. There is only so much emotional blackmail that this reader can take before becoming bored. I did want to shake Zoe at this stage but of course, this was the love of her life and the children were being used as chess pieces in the messy game of divorce with Justine and Robert as part of the process.
Was it the same story as The Exhibitionist? The characters have changed and it isn't a gay relationship at the heart of the story but, other than that, much is similar. Mendelson is obviously making a study of how badly people can behave within relationships.
August 18, 2024
It must be great fun to write a monster, Charlotte Mendelson has done it before in The Exhibitionist, but the monster in this book seems even more monstrous. I think we are very used to the idea of men in this role but here we have a shift in perspective.
The story recounts the breakdown of the relationship of Penny and Zoe, a lesbian couple, complicated by their extended "family" which includes the father of their children and his sister, Penny's ex. Penny and Zoe are academics and we get some very realistic insights into the challenges for young women of building a career in the academic world. The world of counselling services is also very credibly sketched. But Penny dominates the story with her astonishingly awful behaviour - gaslighting, coercive control, it's all there. And it is literally breathtaking: as the tension built and I read the last few pages I was indeed breathless.
The horror of Penny's emotional manipulation is leavened by some comedy but this does not completely overcome the essential sadness and the sympathy which the reader must feel for the couple's children, Rose and Matilda, and Zoe's desperate attempts to make their needs paramount while still trying to placate Penny and sustain their relationship. The story unfolds in sections headed "Then" and "Now" - some reviewers seem to have found this confusing but I thought is was very effective in building the tension. The supporting characters are all neatly drawn and the dialogue is excellent - the constant interruptions when Zoe tries to speak are as frustrating for the reader as for Zoe.
When I have finished reading books I have enjoyed, I often wish I could meet the characters in real life. But I can only pray that I never encounter people like those I met in these pages. A beautifully written tour de force but you need to be feeling strong to read it.
The story recounts the breakdown of the relationship of Penny and Zoe, a lesbian couple, complicated by their extended "family" which includes the father of their children and his sister, Penny's ex. Penny and Zoe are academics and we get some very realistic insights into the challenges for young women of building a career in the academic world. The world of counselling services is also very credibly sketched. But Penny dominates the story with her astonishingly awful behaviour - gaslighting, coercive control, it's all there. And it is literally breathtaking: as the tension built and I read the last few pages I was indeed breathless.
The horror of Penny's emotional manipulation is leavened by some comedy but this does not completely overcome the essential sadness and the sympathy which the reader must feel for the couple's children, Rose and Matilda, and Zoe's desperate attempts to make their needs paramount while still trying to placate Penny and sustain their relationship. The story unfolds in sections headed "Then" and "Now" - some reviewers seem to have found this confusing but I thought is was very effective in building the tension. The supporting characters are all neatly drawn and the dialogue is excellent - the constant interruptions when Zoe tries to speak are as frustrating for the reader as for Zoe.
When I have finished reading books I have enjoyed, I often wish I could meet the characters in real life. But I can only pray that I never encounter people like those I met in these pages. A beautifully written tour de force but you need to be feeling strong to read it.
October 4, 2024
This is a relentless telling of a toxic marriage bouncing, in its telling, between the day of its unravelling and the story of the years of how the relationship began and progressed. Whilst its difference is that this is a lesbian marriage, it has all the hallmarks of other claustrophobic marriage/relationship tales. It sparked memories of the recent Kairos by Jenny Erpenbeck but also Middlemarch by George Eliot.
It is a much worn path for a reason, intimacy and vulnerability are open for assault all the time and whilst we think of coercive control as a modern concept, it has always existed. This novel really drills down into the idea of complicity versus self worth/wanting an easy life in a way that is relatable yet deeply painful, not least by the ripples it creates within the self-made family and the tsunami of consequences for their two teenage daughters.
This is not an easy read yet Mendelson's writing kept me turning the pages despite how it was making me feel. A great portrayal, I inhabited these character but whether it is a "Goodread" is going to be incredibly personal
It is a much worn path for a reason, intimacy and vulnerability are open for assault all the time and whilst we think of coercive control as a modern concept, it has always existed. This novel really drills down into the idea of complicity versus self worth/wanting an easy life in a way that is relatable yet deeply painful, not least by the ripples it creates within the self-made family and the tsunami of consequences for their two teenage daughters.
This is not an easy read yet Mendelson's writing kept me turning the pages despite how it was making me feel. A great portrayal, I inhabited these character but whether it is a "Goodread" is going to be incredibly personal
August 16, 2024
I'm rating this as highly as three* because it is very well written, with excruciatingly accurate depictions of emotions in tatters, of university life, of characters and how they carry off (or not) their clothing choices - all that is there to enjoy or at least appreciate. But I couldn't wait to finish this book. This is the story of the love affair between Zoe - from whose point of view the story is told - and Penny, both high-flying academics. Of their marriage, their attempts to bring children into an increasingly toxic relationship, and of the other people in the frame: Penny's ex-lover Justine and Justine's brother Robin, who has a role to play as father of Penny and Zoe's children. Everyone is unremittingly awful, toxically awful. Apart from Zoe and she is just a doormat. Impossible to see how she and Penny got together. Others have described this book as blackly humorous. For me it was slow moving disaster: grim, raw painful and utterly without any gleam of hope.
August 15, 2024
What the hell was this book? I like a bit of a Debbie Downer of a book but this was awful. Truly every character was awful with no redeeming qualities at all.
Penny was dreadful, literally nothing to like about her. How are we to believe that Zoe would stay with her? She was too awful though, totally unbelievable. She wasn’t even charming or sometimes sweet just a horrible troll of a woman.
Don’t get me started on Zoe such a total wimp and doormat. Whatever before they had kids, afterwards she should have stepped up and protected them. I could (and did) squeal in frustration many times “bloody do something or say something……anything!!!”
Oh ya and nothing happens. You are waiting the whole book for something, anything to happen but nope. So ya spend this long book, with awful people where nothing happens. Maybe not?
Penny was dreadful, literally nothing to like about her. How are we to believe that Zoe would stay with her? She was too awful though, totally unbelievable. She wasn’t even charming or sometimes sweet just a horrible troll of a woman.
Don’t get me started on Zoe such a total wimp and doormat. Whatever before they had kids, afterwards she should have stepped up and protected them. I could (and did) squeal in frustration many times “bloody do something or say something……anything!!!”
Oh ya and nothing happens. You are waiting the whole book for something, anything to happen but nope. So ya spend this long book, with awful people where nothing happens. Maybe not?
September 30, 2024
Had to keep coming up for air with this one. The writing is as intense and claustrophobic as the toxic, coercive-controlling relationship between the two women, but with rare flashes of humour to lighten the mood. Charlotte Mendelson writes dialogue so convincingly, which exposes every agonising detail as the relationship implodes slowly and painfully. Many issues are raised, all of them uncomfortable, disturbing and scarily recognisable, to do with relationships: marriage, romances, parent-child, family and friends etc. It left me feeling emotionally battered and quite exhausted which is perhaps indicative of the exceptional quality of the writing.
August 20, 2024
I laboured through this book hoping its weak plot might pick up, but it didn’t get any better. Drippy self-obsessed Zoe and bossy Penny don’t elicit much sympathy. They are supposed to be academics but the author clearly has little knowledge of what real academic life is like. And there’s a fussy pretentiousness to the writing that irked me from the first page. I read the reviews in the newspapers and they make the book sound much more dramatic and well-written than it turned out to be. It’s my first time to read her work and I don’t plan to read any more of her books after this one.
September 8, 2024
At first I found this entertaining and interesting. However I was unconvinced by the characters. She didn't manage to make me see how Zoe fell for penny or why she stayed. I could understand the idea but it didn't feel believable. I thought she really wanted to write about having children and the rest seemed a bit unnecessary. I've never thought that as a reader you have to be able to like the characters, but the narrator somehow has to understand too that they are not Ok. I think I was supposed to feel sympathetic towards Zoe and I certainly didn't.
October 18, 2024
I spoiled this with reviews before reading and people were not pleased. So I read it anyway. And I guess the point was to write an extremely unlikable character or maybe no one was likable? We’ve got a narcissist and a pushover. Or maybe a couple of narcissists. Everyone was wack. So if you want to read about an unequivocally toxic relationship through its end while they fight for custody of their children and its very telling beginning that doesn’t make you wonder at all why it didn’t work out, then read this?
August 14, 2024
A friend recommended this based on the reviews but it's a really irritating book. The author's tone of voice really grated on me. Maybe it was the patronising way she portrayed the single working-class character in the book. Maybe it was all those unnecessary semi-colons. But I came away from reading this thinking I don't want to read any of her other books and wondering why this book had got such good reviews.
August 14, 2024
I started reading this, but got bored and didn't finish it. It skips around so much it's easy to get lost if you don't read it in one sitting. Both the main characters are so irritating, it's difficult to work up any sympathy for them - I couldn't work out which one I disliked the most, the oh-poor-me self-obsessed Zoe with her tiresome whine or Penny, the brash caricature of an Australian. Maybe it's worth persisting with, but I gave up.
September 10, 2024
This book confused me to no end.
The narrative structure of ‘then’ and ‘now’ seemed to keep pulling me out of moments I wanted to sit in, I could never get my bearings on what was happening because I kept being forced along.
I did think the concept was interesting, abuse in queer relationships is so often painted in an extreme way , that to see this subtle psychological abuse demonstrated was interesting. It worked in some interesting ideas, but overall not for me 😗
The narrative structure of ‘then’ and ‘now’ seemed to keep pulling me out of moments I wanted to sit in, I could never get my bearings on what was happening because I kept being forced along.
I did think the concept was interesting, abuse in queer relationships is so often painted in an extreme way , that to see this subtle psychological abuse demonstrated was interesting. It worked in some interesting ideas, but overall not for me 😗
September 7, 2024
This is a very intense portrayal of a marriage gone wrong, where one wife is controlling and manipulating the other wife to the extreme and involving all their friends and the professionals counsellors in the process, with the effect of making the reader feel the fear and anxiety Zoe feels. Not a comfortable book to read but very well done.
October 11, 2024
Rating of 3.75. I enjoyed this but I was frustrated with the characters. What does this book give you? A lesbian relationship between a younger and older woman, they decided to have children with one of the ex girlfriend’s brother. Very complicated arrangements. Coercive control, bully and ultimately an unhappy relationship. I enjoyed it, but didn’t love it!
November 7, 2024
I am hating this book but it’s a bit like watching a train wreck. I have to keep listening. I hate the characters, I hate the reader, I hate the Australian accent, it’s just awful. I hate that the writer has made awful toxic character Australian. There is nothing to recommend in this book. Don’t read it!!!!
Want to read
July 28, 2024Great Review in London Times 28/7/2024
August 24, 2024
It would be wrong to say that I enjoyed this book.That doesn’t mean that it isn’t well written and insightful however. So many horrid, toxic characters but the growing strength of the main character, and the love of her children, stands out the most for me. The inter-generational trauma was a hard read-her parents toxic relationship mirrored in her own. This nuanced description of inter-generational trauma, across 3 generations, and what it takes to break this, was impressive. I read this book in two sittings because I absolutely needed to know how it would turn out.
September 10, 2024
Ooooof this was a toxic relationship 101
3.5*
3.5*
Read
September 12, 2024DNF @30% and mad I let myself go that far.
Shelved as 'did-not-finish'
September 20, 2024DNFed at 20% because I just do not care
Read
September 29, 2024DNF - A total mess!
October 12, 2024
DNF I just wasn’t interested in reading about a young woman getting gaslit, bossed around and abused by an older pushy woman in a position of power.
Read
October 20, 2024DNF. This started off really well and I loved it, but after a while it got a bit samey and boring so I left it unread for a few months. I finally came back to it… and decided not to continue.
November 13, 2024
3.5 stars
Displaying 1 - 30 of 33 reviews