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Monday, June 1, 2009
title: The Spare Wife
author: Alex Witchel
genre: fiction
pages: 286
published: 2009
first line: Jacqueline Posner stood at the edge of her dining room and aimed a blow- dryer at the center of a pale peach rose.
rated: 3 1/2 stars
In The Spare Wife , socialite and widow Ponce Morris lives in the City, hosts dinner parties for the rich as well as playing 'Spare Wife' to married couples. She earned the nickname because she manages to befriend married couples and talk sports with the husbands, while being a friend to the wives.
The beautiful Ponce ended up in New York after finishing high school in North Carolina. She started a modeling career and in her twenties wound up marrying a wealthy man in his sixties. Now that she is widowed, she is having an affair with well-known married fertility Doctor Neil Grossman.
One day during one of their weekend trysts, an ambitious and young editorial assistant named Babette Steele spots Ponce kissing Neil in a hotel lobby. Babette, who herself is having an affair with her boss's husband,
decides that exposing these two would be her ticket to making it big in the business.
This book was interesting with some good drama. I enjoyed The Spare Wife , if you're looking for a quick, light read, this is it. However, I didn't give it a higher rating because I didn't feel like I could relate to any of the characters.
'...The two women had been each other's dependable allies, both subject to the whims of older, powerful husbands who had come from nothing and designated thier young, beautiful wives their personal emmisaries to the big time. And make no mistake, those endless parties had constituted work as crucial as any corporate board meeting. The dresses and the jewelry and the flowers aside, you could stand in a Park Avenue apartment and see the values of social power rise and fall above each coiffed head as clearly as if you were looking at the board at the Stock Exchange.'
Special thanks to MotherTalk.com for sending me a copy of this book to read and review. Check out their book reviews here
