The English Wife

The English Wife
Doreen Roberts
Grade: C/C-


I picked this book up because it was a cover contest winner and part of my 9 in 09 challenge. The back blurb sounded intriguing and in line with my usual tastes. The story is about Marjorie Maitland, a staid, predictable women who finds herself at loose ends when her domineering husband dies. Still, she expects life to go on pretty much as before until she sits down for the reading of the will. This one act turns her life completely upside down. Not only is her financial situation difficult but there is a property she didn't know she even owned -- in the South of England of all places -- that is being "rented" by a woman paying zero rent. As Marjorie tries to solve the riddle of why her husband kept this property a secret from her she learns a lot about the husband she never knew and becomes the women he had never really let her become but that she was always meant to be.

My problems with this book are myriad. The whole premise made no sense to me. If a man wants to buy his mistress/former lover a house, why not put the deed in her name? Why keep hold of the property and then leave it to your wife? When Marjorie gets to England and finds out her husband had a whole other family of which she knew nothing I could understand her righteous anger. What I couldn't understand was everyone around her insisting that the people in that cottage were family to her and that the reason Donald left the cottage to her was that he wanted her to get to know his daughter (from a previous liaison) and the daughter's children. I was stunned that Marjorie ran with this idea, insisting on helping the girl and then turning herself into a grandma to the girl's children. Call me mean and evil but that just wouldn't happen with me. I think what was disturbing about it though was the idea that seemed to permeate the book that this was the only right choice. That a woman who had gone in there and said, "Look, sorry but your Dad didn't leave you the house and I am currently broke. As a gesture of charity I'll go halfsies with you -- we can either sell and split the money or you can buy me out." would have been considered selfish. And as we all know, a romance novel heroine can never, ever be selfish.

To add to my disgust it is clear that Donald, the former husband and father, was a nasty character. Not nasty in the sense of a gun toting villain but nasty in small, cruel ways with both families. I was stunned that this didn't affect Marjorie more. Gillian, the daughter, at least had a proper sense of bitterness ;-) but Marjorie was so quick to forgive, with so little internal wrestling over the issue it just felt wrong to me..

There is a romance which I think was meant to be sweet but in light of everything that was happening it didn't really make an impression on me.

Overall, a disappointing read.

Tea: Unworthy of a cuppa.