Revenge of the Middle-Aged Woman
Elizabeth Buchan, 2002
Penguin Group USA
368 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780142003725
Summary
For twenty-five years, Rose Lloyd has juggled marriage, motherhood, and career with remarkable success. It has been a life of family picnics, books and wine, a cherished house, and her own exquisitely designed garden-sunny and comfortable. But then the carefully managed life to which Rose has become accustomed comes crashing down around her when—over the course of a few days—her marriage and her career both fall apart.
Can Rose, whose anguish is barely softened by the ministrations of friends and grown children with their own problems, ever start over? Not easily. But it's amazing what prolonged reflection, the slimming effect of a lost appetite, a new slant on independence (and a little Parisian lingerie) will do. Especially when an old flame suddenly reappears.
Full of humor, clever insight, and a whimsical sense of the absurd, Revenge of the Middle-Aged Woman is an irresistible and finely written fantasy for anyone who ever wondered what a certain age would look like from beyond the looking-glass-and who will find it ripe with promise that the best days are yet to come. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—May 21, 1948
• Where—Guildford, Surrey, England, UK
• Education—Uiversity of Kent at Canterbury
• Awards—Romantic Novelists' Assoc. Novel of the Year, 1994
(for Consider the Lily)
• Currently—lives in London, England
Elizabeth Buchan has seen success on both sides of the publishing fence. She began her career writing for Penguin, then took a job as a fiction editor at Random House. When she began writing for herself, she managed motherhood, writing and editing. Her medium is the romance novel, but Buchan produces much more than just escapist love stories. In an interview with iMagazine.com, she explains,
Romantic fiction is a wider, richer and more honorable tradition than it is given credit for. It includes some of the greatest novels ever written —Jane Eyre, Tess of the D'Urbevilles, Wuthering Heights, Pride and Prejudice and Anna Karenina.
Although Buchan is best known for her romance novels, her first book was actually a biography of one of the world's most beloved children's authors. Beatrix Potter: The Story of the Creator of Peter Rabbit was released 1988. Written for young readers, the book covers Potter's extraordinary life, her art and her lasting contribution to children's literature.
Her first novel, Daughters of the Storm (1989), intertwines the fates of three women as the fate of a nation hangs in the balance. On the eve of the French Revolution, Sophie, Heloise and Marie each seek freedoms of their own — in love and society — and forge a friendship that will change their lives forever. In Light of the Moon (1991) Evelyn St. John is in occupied territory in France during World War II. When she meets and falls in love with someone who is supposed to be the enemy, political truths are redefined in the name of love.
London's Sunday Times called Buchan's third novel "the literary equivalent of the English country garden" when it was released in 1993. Consider the Lily is the story of two cousins —one rich, the other poor—and their competition for the love of the same man. Set against the backdrop of the English countryside in the years between the two world wars, the novel became an international bestseller and Buchan won the 1994 Romantic Novelists' Association Novel of the Year Award.
Eventually, after the success of Consider the Lily, the call to write became so loud that Buchan retired from her publishing career. Her fourth novel, Perfect Love (1996) also marks a shift in Buchan's novels. Her first three were historical romances, but with the fourth, characters and settings are brought into the 20th century. Here, Prue Valor has been in a proper English marriage with the much older Max for twenty years. Without explanation, but certainly with much guilt, Prue begins an affair with her stepdaughter's new husband (they are the same age) when they realize they cannot deny their attraction for each other. Living magazine said of the book, "The real battle in this novel is between raging passions and English restraint."
Set in the high-finance world of London in the 1980s, Against Her Nature (1997) tells the story of the fallout from being the subject of rumors of incompetence amid a devastating Lloyd's crash. Two women, Tess and Becky balance their fast-paced game of success with every opportunity afforded them, including children. In Secrets of the Heart (2000), four thirty-somethings have found love and must now find a way to hold on to it. Only two succeed in this clever story about the deals we make for love.
Buchan's next novel, Revenge of the Middle-Aged Woman (2003) was released to much critical acclaim. This is the story of what happens during the "happily ever after." Shocked at her husband's affair and the collapse of their marriage, Rose reviews the last twenty years of her life, remembers the carefree woman she used to be, and makes a triumphant decision to fight back by moving on. The book became a New York Times bestseller, film rights to the book were snatched up almost immediately, and the Boston Globe called it "a thoughtful, intelligent, funny, coming-of-middle-age story."
Questions of fulfillment are also the subject of 2004's The Good Wife. Fanny is the devoted woman behind a very public, very busy politician—yet her own ambitions disappeared somewhere along the way. Likewise, in Everything She Thought She Wanted (2005), two women must decide just how much happiness they can sacrifice in order to stay with their husbands.
In her earlier books, Buchan brought intelligence and depth to the historical romance novel. Her later books have also captured the hard choices women must make in love, in family and in society. With humor and intelligence, her contemporary characters are Bridget Jones aged 25 years, at the point where she has attained the life she sought so long ago, but finds that the searching never ends.
Extras
From a 2003 Barnes & Nobel interview:
• Buchan is married to a grandson of John Buchan, author of The Thirty-Nine Steps, the famous 1915 spy thriller (and 1953 film) .
• Buchan reflects that "one of the great joys that hedges around the business of writing is making contact with other writers. I belong to a group that meets every month or so in a shabby old pub in north London, and we sit down to dinner, all of us writers, all of us totally absorbed by the problems, pleasures, and rewards of the process."
• When asked what book most influenced her life, here is what she answered:
Middlemarch by George Eliot. For me, the touchstone for the novel. Once read, the fictional construction of a small town in rural England in the early 19th century is impossible to forget. A truly mature work, infused by intellect and a vision of society, in which the author's sure, disciplined handling and analysis of human nature is perfectly poised, drawing together in a thematic whole the lives of the men and women who lie in "unvisited tombs."
Book Reviews
This Middle-Aged’ woman’s revenge is delightfully dishy. The "revenge" in the title has little to do with getting back at people. Rather, Buchan celebrates the patience and wisdom that only age brings. While middle-aged women will relish the novel, it's a cautionary tale for husbands with eyes glued to the pertly twitching buttox of that office minx. Beware. Better that aging first bride than the girlish tendril you seduced. She just might start craving what you thought you had escaped.
USA Today
It would be easy to turn Rose's story into a fantasy of revenge.... But what makes Buchan's take on the situation so appealing is that she sidesteps the expected plot devices. It takes more than misfortune, even if it is extreme, to change the basics of character. Rose never has been the kind of woman to brood on her hurts or to nurse a desire for revenge. It wouldn't be realistic for her anger and hurt to drive her in that direction now. Buchan skillfully brings the reader into Rose's days, and while there is anger there is also sadness, memories both bitter and sweet, and worries about the future.... Revenge of the Middle-Aged Woman is not about revenge as much as it is about change. It is a nicely written piece of chick lit that ends up being thought-provoking in its restraint.... This is a novel that is about a three-dimensional woman, not a stereotype, and she's a character that grows on the reader while she grows into a new stage of her life.
Denver Post
Revenge of the Middle-Aged Woman is an eye-catcher of the first degree—even if most of those eyes are starting to disappear into the folds of their faces.... I raced through [the book] like a woman two weeks late for her hair-color appointment...[it] is a guilty pleasure.
Rocky Mountain News
A must-read for Elizabeth Berg fans and anyone looking for a new perspective on love and starting over. —Carrie Bissey
Booklist
(Audio version.) Buchan's latest novel finds the carefully managed life of 48-year-old Rose Lloyd, a successful book review editor, turned upside down. First, her husband of 25 years announces he's leaving Rose for her own sexy assistant. Next, insult is added to injury: Rose is fired from her job and replaced by none other than the woman who broke up her marriage. Buchan lends a compelling emotional depth to her main characters, seamlessly merging Rose's struggle to rise above the betrayal, shock and fear of middle-aged "invisibility" with flashbacks to her youth, recollections of her first love to a now famed travel writer, memories of family vacations and her grown kids' childhood. With extensive stage and theater work to her credit, and incorporating myriad voices to the diverse cast, Gilpin makes the book's transition to a 10-hour unabridged audio format exceptionally smooth. Narrating mostly in a proper British accent, which perfectly suits Rose's "delight in domesticity" and enhances the book's dry, slightly askew sense of humor, Gilpin also captures the outrage of Rose's son and daughter (both of whom have their own relationship issues), the American drawl of her old flame (who makes an unexpected return), the grumpy rumblings of an elderly neighbor she cares for and the feisty opinions of her mother, making for a good production listeners will enjoy.
Publishers Weekly
Happy for 25 years, Rose watches aghast as both her career and her marriage suddenly go down the drain. A best seller in England that's slated for the post-Bridget Jones crowd
Library Journal
Britisher Buchan’s US debut, the story of a middle-aged wife who, when her life and marriage fall apart, manages to fight back, move on, even hope for something better. Rose Lloyd, book editor for a London paper, is happily married to Nathan, an executive on the paper, and the mother of two adult children, Sam and Poppy. Her life is probably as good as it gets, and though Rose isn’t complacent, she is certainly unprepared for the betrayals about to implode her life. Nathan announces he’s leaving and moving in with her trusted assistant, the younger and sexy Minty. Reeling, she learns next that she’s to be replaced as editor by Minty because her boss wants someone younger, with new ideas, running the book section. Her woes mount as she hears that her mother needs surgery and Nathan is no longer paying her medical insurance. Her much loved cat dies, daughter Poppy e-mails from Thailand that’s she’s married hippie boyfriend Richard, and Nathan also wants their house for him and Minty. A bitter blow, because Rose has loved fixing it up and making a beautiful garden. At first she weeps, wonders where she went wrong, can’t eat, drinks too much. But then she begins to fight back. She visits a college friend in Paris who makes her buy some sexy clothes, is given some interesting jobs, is befriended by a Cabinet Minister who’s been hurt by a scandal caused by his mentally ill wife, and meets up again with her first love, American Rhodes scholar Hal Thorne, now a famous travel writer. As she recalls how she met and parted from Hal, she learns that Nathan is finding life with Minty more complicated than he’d expected and that he misses his family. With her children making interesting changes in their lives, Rose is ready for a few herself. A wry and elegant tale about a woman of a certain age fighting back and winning unexpected victories.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Do you think the young Rose should have stayed with Hal or did she make the right decision to marry Nathan?
2. How would you describe Minty's relationship with Rose? Were there definite indicators something was amiss that Rose might have noticed sooner?
3. Do you think that Rose was complacent in her marriage and career? What have you learned from her journey toward self-exploration?
4. What do you think of Minty? Did she really want Rose's life all along and just pretended to be independent or do you think something changed her?
5. Rose sought friendship and solace with friends to help her through the depression. Are there other ways she might have helped herself? What would you have done?
6. The novel was written from a wife's point of view. At any time in the novel, did you find yourself sympathizing more with Nathan than with Rose?
7. Which character, if any, in the novel disappointed you most and why? Which character surprised you most and why?
8. How do you think Rose's life choices have influenced her daughter Poppy's life? Do you think Poppy's marriage will last?
9. The novel ends on an ambiguous note. What do you think happens next?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
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