My Wife's Affair

by Nancy Woodruff

Book Overview

A smart, sexy novel about a woman's search for her former self on the London stage Georgie and Peter, very much in love, move to London with their three children. Once there, Georgie's dormant acting career takes off and she wins the role of Dora Jordan in a one-woman show. Dora Jordan was the most famous comic actress of the eighteenth century (she had thirteen illegitimate children, including ten by the future king of England). As Georgie rehearses...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0399156291
• ISBN13: 9780399156298
• Release Date: April 2010
• Publisher: Amy Einhorn Books
• Length: 269 Pages
• Weight: 1.10 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 6.3" x 9.2"
• Age Range: 18 years and up
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

Packs a Wallop

I stormed through this book in a couple of days, I had to keep coming back to it. I was taken aback at first by the narrator-- his separation from the action (and his wife's consciousness) that he renders in such detail. But then I saw in him the frustrated writer filling in the blanks to further torture himself with a sordid blow-by-blow-- then ultimately, as the author of his own tragedy, in betraying the banality of it all, as against his marriage. My sympathies and allegiances were yanked all over the place, but the payoff left me with a deep forgiveness for human folly and longing, and a sober appreciation of all that can be lost and gained when weighing personal pride and hurt against the chance for redemption in love. Hats off to the author.

Wow, my book group loved this book!!!

My book group intended to read another title but, when several of us couldn't get through that other choice, someone (having seen a glowing review of My Wife's Affair) suggested a last minute switch to this recently released gem. None of us needed more than 2 days to finish this book; none of us could put it down. All 5 of us (4 women and 1 man) related to the compromises that both actor Georgie and writer Peter had made at the outset of parenthood, and to the pull to return to her art that Georgie feels once her 3 boys are placed in school, and she finds herself deliciously free and unencumbered in her new surrounds as an American expatriate in London. Peter is also a sympathetic character, and for me it was his voice, as well as the powerful ending that will stay with me for years to come, his gorgeous wisdom and keen, lushly delivered observations that pulled so strongly at my heart, that convinced me that Woodruff has earned every point of each of her five stars.

A Sexy Must Read

A taut and penetrating examination of the psychology of a marriage struggling between life's inevitable rip tide of complacency and the rocky showls of infidelity. The journalist husband narrates this tale of desire and suffering with the kind of helpless compassion one feels watching a car wreck--the details are etched on the eye, the fault is obvious and irrelevant, the impact devestating and there's not a damn thing he can do now except relive it. While the book is set in the glamorous New York and London theater worlds, the couple, their children and their journey could be transposed anywhere where young people with dreams fall in love, have children and desperately try to figure out if their new mini van can in any way get them where they thought they wanted to go. Once begun, you won't be able to put it down.

Beautiful, realistic and ambiguous

Nancy Woodruff has written a novel about adultery that begins as a story about a happy couple raising their children in suburban New York. From there their lives slowly veer off course. Told from the point of view of Peter, the husband and father, we hear first about how dedicated and loving Georgie is. She is an exemplary mother and clearly a MILF that Peter is lucky to have. We understand only too late how he does what he can to keep her happy, but we also find that he is destined to fail at holding their marriage together. The story progresses without melodrama. We learn the facts and later realize their significance. It is tragedy told from the point of view of someone who needs to make sense of the misery. The story is real and sad, and I found myself feeling uncomfortable in parts because we see Georgie's mistake being made, we understand how it could happen and we despise ourselves for being a part of it. We won't let it happen again, but of course it does. When Peter discovers Georgie's betrayal we think we already know how it will end, but the knockout punch, quietly and expertly foreshadowed throughout the novel, took me by surprise. After reading this book I find myself wondering who is the villain. It bothers me. Who are we supposed to blame? Perhaps this is the brilliance in the novel. Full of ripe and realistic characters in a situation that makes the reader uncomfortable, it has beauty alongside the sadness. It is worth a read, and then another.

Keep reading....don't put it down

I was wavering between a 4 and a 5 the entire way through the book, and then the ending brought it all the way up to a 5/5. The book is narrated by Georgie's husband...it goes back and forth telling about the life of Dora Jordan also an actress/comedian who Georgie portrays in a one-woman show and Georgie's life with her husband and three boys. Georgie left the stage in New York to be a stay-at-home mother, but now that her husband has been transferred to London and the children are enrolled in London schools, she wants to go back to work in the theater. Georgie lands the role as Dora Jordan on her first tryout. The play is a hit for Georgie, and she ends up traveling and leaving her husband and children for long periods of time and having an affair with the director. Her heart aches every time she leaves her children, but she still won't give up the touring. The ending will haunt you long after you turn the last page.