After thirty-eight years of marriage, Eleanor Anderson's illusion of an idyllic life and marriage crashes into reality after she wakes up and finds her husband dead from a heart attack. It is after the funeral that she learns and acknowledges that her husband had never really been her own.Told in alternating first person perspective between the legal and the illegal wife--Claire Anderson, a thirty-something psychology professor at a prestigious university--The Other Wife (2015) by best-selling Amazon writer Kathleen Irene Paterka is a perfectly good story about love, loss, betrayal, and starting over. A solid writer, Paterka's writing, per se, is not a problem. The biggest issue with this book is that it suffers from a lack of editing.
At 387 pages, The Other Wife is unnecessarily long. Many ideas connected to the wives' histories with the dead husband and their growing sense of their identity are repeated multiple times.
Style-wise, the story is developed so much through internal dialogue and reflection that the act of reading became quite a drag.
Despite being married to Richard for four years, Claire was the most devastated by his death even though he set her up to profit the most from his death at the cost of his legal wife. I'm not sure if this characterization is due to a point that Paterka thought to suggest--money can't buy happiness--or to the fact that she is the mother to two young children, but I remained unmoved by her emotional struggles. Midway through, I just skimmed or skipped her chapters entirely. The characterization of Genevieve, Eleanor and Richard's grown daughter and a daddy's girl, was pure stock. Her storyline and the role that she played in the main plot nears caricature.
While characterized as charming by both wives, Richard seems to have been a sociopath. He married Eleanor on the rebound because she idolized him. Her pride was affected by the fact that he married her out of all the beauties he had access to: She describes herself as being no beauty. As such, her entire life was spent in trying to maintain her identity as Mrs. Richard Anderson. She had turned a blind eye to his faults and hurts by never questioning or pushing back. She became dependent at the expense of her own self and desires.
Claire, on the other hand, had an identity based on her academic prowess which resulted in her attaining professional respect and status. Until Richard, she had not seen, explored, or relished her power as female. He fathered two of her children in the process. In the aftermath of his death, she buckles under the pain of losing the safety, stability, and intimacy that he provided.
Despite my dislikes, The Other Wife earned three stars. The concept of the story is good, as is my biggest takeaway: A woman's sense of happiness, identity, and worth should not be based on the man she partners with. In general, relying on your partner for your happiness and sense of worth is foolish and dangerous.
This is a CBR8 crossposted review.
While characterized as charming by both wives, Richard seems to have been a sociopath. He married Eleanor on the rebound because she idolized him. Her pride was affected by the fact that he married her out of all the beauties he had access to: She describes herself as being no beauty. As such, her entire life was spent in trying to maintain her identity as Mrs. Richard Anderson. She had turned a blind eye to his faults and hurts by never questioning or pushing back. She became dependent at the expense of her own self and desires.
Claire, on the other hand, had an identity based on her academic prowess which resulted in her attaining professional respect and status. Until Richard, she had not seen, explored, or relished her power as female. He fathered two of her children in the process. In the aftermath of his death, she buckles under the pain of losing the safety, stability, and intimacy that he provided.
Despite my dislikes, The Other Wife earned three stars. The concept of the story is good, as is my biggest takeaway: A woman's sense of happiness, identity, and worth should not be based on the man she partners with. In general, relying on your partner for your happiness and sense of worth is foolish and dangerous.
This is a CBR8 crossposted review.
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