4 Star
Maybe it was those extra five pounds I’d gained. Maybe it was because I
was about to turn the same age my mother was when I lost her. Maybe it
was because after almost twenty years of marriage my husband and I
seemed to be running out of things to say to each other.
But when the anonymous online study called “Marriage in the 21st Century” showed up in my inbox, I had no idea how profoundly it would change my life. It wasn’t long before I was assigned both a pseudonym (Wife 22) and a caseworker (Researcher 101).
And, just like that, I found myself answering questions.
7. Sometimes I tell him he’s snoring when he’s not snoring so he’ll sleep in the guest room and I can have the bed all to myself.
61. Chet Baker on the tape player. He was cutting peppers for the salad. I looked at those hands and thought, I am going to have this man’s children.
67. To not want what you don’t have. What you can’t have. What you shouldn’t have.
32. That if we weren’t careful, it was possible to forget one another.
Before the study, my life was an endless blur of school lunches and doctor’s appointments, family dinners, budgets, and trying to discern the fastest-moving line at the grocery store. I was Alice Buckle: spouse of William and mother to Zoe and Peter, drama teacher and Facebook chatter, downloader of memories and Googler of solutions.
But these days, I’m also Wife 22. And somehow, my anonymous correspondence with Researcher 101 has taken an unexpectedly personal turn. Soon, I’ll have to make a decision—one that will affect my family, my marriage, my whole life. But at the moment, I’m too busy answering questions.
As it turns out, confession can be a very powerful aphrodisiac.
But when the anonymous online study called “Marriage in the 21st Century” showed up in my inbox, I had no idea how profoundly it would change my life. It wasn’t long before I was assigned both a pseudonym (Wife 22) and a caseworker (Researcher 101).
And, just like that, I found myself answering questions.
7. Sometimes I tell him he’s snoring when he’s not snoring so he’ll sleep in the guest room and I can have the bed all to myself.
61. Chet Baker on the tape player. He was cutting peppers for the salad. I looked at those hands and thought, I am going to have this man’s children.
67. To not want what you don’t have. What you can’t have. What you shouldn’t have.
32. That if we weren’t careful, it was possible to forget one another.
Before the study, my life was an endless blur of school lunches and doctor’s appointments, family dinners, budgets, and trying to discern the fastest-moving line at the grocery store. I was Alice Buckle: spouse of William and mother to Zoe and Peter, drama teacher and Facebook chatter, downloader of memories and Googler of solutions.
But these days, I’m also Wife 22. And somehow, my anonymous correspondence with Researcher 101 has taken an unexpectedly personal turn. Soon, I’ll have to make a decision—one that will affect my family, my marriage, my whole life. But at the moment, I’m too busy answering questions.
As it turns out, confession can be a very powerful aphrodisiac.
Lydia - 4 Star
Wife 22 is like a
grown up Bridget Jones’s Diary but the difference is that it isn't quite
all giggles. A novel about love, marriage, and family and how modern
communication affects it all, Wife 22 is cute, fun, funny and easy read. With
just as many insecure antics as Bridget, Alice is about to mark the anniversary of
her mother's death. But this year is different, this year Alice is surpassing the age her mother had
lived to which deeply unsettles her.
We meet Alice as she is struggling to understand her
increasingly distant husband, worries that her daughter has developed an eating
disorder and fears that her son might be gay but won't tell them. When an
email appears in her inbox inviting her to take part in a survey about marriage,
Alice accepts, but doesn't tell her
husband and as she begins to answer the questions, she begins to further
question her marriage. Eventually the emails between her and 'Researcher
101' become an anonymous Facebook friendship assumed under fake profiles and
takes on a life of its own.
You can't help
but relate to Alice. Even though I couldn't justify her behaviour myself,
she's just too real with her confusion and worries not to relate or be
sympathetic to her character. Alice is troubled, confused and
worried about everyone around her - except herself, which she should be the
most worried about! Her answers to the survey questions draw a humourous
portrayal of the current state of her marriage as well as such a romantic
history of when she met her husband. Her answers were romantic at times, funny
at others, and sometimes really sad. My heart broke for this woman who
wondered where her life - and her love - had gone.
Wife 22 skips
from prose, to Google searches, to Alice's answers to the questionnaire,
to Facebook chats, to Tweets, back to Facebook status updates, and scenes. But
it wasn't as difficult as I thought it would be to read. I actually found
it different and refreshing to read something out of the typical
literary box and thought it realistic of how we now communicate.
Even
though it was amusing to try and figure out the survey questions Alice was
posed the one thing I do wish was that I had the questions and answers
together instead of just the answers throughout the novel and
the questions as an appendix. At the end they didn’t have as much impact
as I feel they would have throughout the novel because some of her answers I
couldn’t even figure out what the question was.
I was also disappointed that Alice didn’t focus more on her daughter,
especially with the worry about her having an eating disorder.
Even though I
usually loathe predictability, I wasn’t even disappointed when I guessed what
was going on about half way through, which speaks volumes for this novel. Full of quirky and loveable characters and a
modern portrayal of a family and marriage, Wife 22 is a fun, funny and thought
provoking read. I'm looking to more from
Melanie Gideon!
Thank you to Ballantine Books for our review copy
Connect with Melanie Gideon here:
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