Wife
01 May 2025Synopsis
'Charlotte Mendelson at her soul-searing best . . . Unbearably brilliant' – Nigella Lawson, bestselling author of Cook, Eat, Repeat
Wife by Charlotte Mendelson is heartbreaking and funny, profound and gripping, as it takes the reader from the end of a relationship to its beginning, and back again.
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. But Penny leaves Zoe a cryptic note, and a passionate affair ensues.
Once Penny confesses all to her live-in lover, Justine, the couple’s happiness seems assured. But there is something else Penny needs in her life as badly as Zoe’s adoration, and thus the beginning of their affair might also have signalled its explosive end . . .
'A bravura portrait of a marriage in meltdown' – The Observer
'Mendelson is a master of the literary monster' – The Sunday Times
'A gift to the reader . . . Irresistible' – Amy Bloom, bestselling author of In Love
Details
01 May 2025
9781529052831Reviews
Poleaxed after finishing this. Charlotte Mendelson at her soul-searing best. Narcissistic monsters and suffocating families are quite the specialty of hers, but Wife is just unbearably brilliantNigella Lawson, bestselling author of Cook, Eat, Repeat
'This is a love story,' Zoe tells the reader, and it is, profoundly so, in the end. But I'll remember it more as a thriller, for the way Mendelson manages to make what looks from the outside like a sad but unremarkable day – packing, Tube journeys – feel like sweaty offcuts from The Bourne Identity . . . God, you want Zoe to get away. Does she? Better read the book.The Sunday Times
A family saga of great insight, with another magnificently grotesque villain at its heartThe Observer
A clever, lacerating account of coercive control . . . a finely executed novelFinancial Times
