“You’re the Devil now,” Zoe is told as we are dropped into the worst day of her life. Hardly the nastiest thing ever said to an academic, but such words carry a heavier punch for a woman walking out on a long-term relationship. Her path to this accusation begins almost 20 years earlier when, as junior faculty, Zoe finds herself courted by an older professor named Penelope who deems her a “brainy little specimen” (much to the ire of Penelope’s existing partner).
Penelope is charming and worldly, a free spirit with a bit of an exhibitionist streak, and the nervous ingenue Zoe is instantly smitten. Cleverly switching back and forth between their initial encounters and the shattering collapse of their relationship, author Charlotte Mendelson offers us a spiky tale of love and hate heightened by occasional flashes of faint absurdity. The result is witty without being pretentious, intelligent without being obnoxious, and altogether human without ever becoming sentimental.
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Neither is there any doubt that Mendelson knows academia, the backdrop against which many of the book’s shenanigans play out, and her depiction of this maddening vocation is a great source of sarcastic asides (“Imagine that being your special skill: Management”). Characters too are deftly sketched, with the novel’s interpersonal dynamics the very definition of beautifully observed. All of which is packaged in an enticing prose which offers just enough detail to ensure scenes are completely immersive but not so much that the effect becomes laboured or distracting. Mendelson’s dialogue is also delightful, especially that of Penelope, the more experienced lesbian who introduces Zoe to the secrets of that world without shame or self-consciousness. Indeed, the author has such a sharp grasp of both characters that one never questions that we are right there with them as their romance blossoms and withers in turn.
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Thus a thoughtful, intimate look at how love can devolve over time into screaming matches and “almighty emails” stretching to thousands of words (“today’s offering was longer than book VI of the Odyssey”), Wife is an intriguing and, at times, darkly hilarious book. Though it perhaps seems wrong to describe a novel about the collapse of a relationship as hugely enjoyable, in Mendelson’s hands this proves to be the case.
