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Meg Wolitzer graduated from Brown in 1981 and published her first novel, Sleepwalking, the following year. Since then, she's written several novels (most recently Surrender, Dorothy), taught writing at places such as the University of Iowa Writer's Workshop and Skidmore College, and has written screenplays. Her novel This is Your Life was made into a motion picture, directed by Nora Ephron, and co-written by Ephron and her sister, Delia Ephron. Her short story "Tea at the House" appeared in Best American Short Stories of 1998 and the Pushcart Prizes. She lives in New York with her husband and sons, where she's working on a new novel.
Photo © Deborah Copaken Kogan
The Wife
"The moment I decided to leave him, the moment I thought, enough, we were thirty-five thousand feet above the ocean, hurtling forward but giving the illusion of stillness and tranquility. Just like our marriage." So opens Meg Wolitzer's compelling and provocative novel The Wife, as Joan Castleman sits beside her husband on their flight to Helsinki. Joan's husband, Joseph Castleman, is "one of those men who own the world...who has no idea how to take care of himself or anyone else, and who derives much of his style from the Dylan Thomas Handbook of Personal Hygiene and Etiquette." He is also one of America's preeminent novelists, about to receive a prestigious international award to honor his accomplishments, and Joan, who has spent forty years subjugating her own literary talents to fan the flames of his career, has finally decided to stop. From this gripping opening, Wolitzer flashes back fifty years to 1950s Smith College and Greenwich Village -- the beginning of the Castleman relationship -- and follows the course of the famous marriage that has brought them to this breaking point, culminating in a shocking ending that outs a carefully kept secret.
Meg Wolitzer's Summer Reading List
Random Family
by Adrian Nicole LeBlanc
I've just begun this book and am so excited to know it will be my first reading experience of the summer. It's a non-fiction account of ten years in the lives of a few people living in the gangsta culture of the Bronx. Money flows, babies are born to teenagers in the blink of an eye, and then ignored, heroin is weighed on triple-beam scales, and the reader is mesmerized.
Mrs. Smith
by Evan S. Connell
My favorite novel of the 20th century, which I like to re-read whenever I have a little time. A beautiful, stirring and tragic account of a woman whose limitations keep her from ever being fulfilled. Evan S. Connell has plumbed the depths of his female character with sorrow and comedy. A masterpiece.
Middlemarch
by George Eliot
Because certain books that I read in college, like this one, needed a more mature eye than I was able to give them at the time. I can't wait to read this one as a fully-grown adult.
The Postman Always Rings Twice
by James M. Cain
Something about the hard-boiled tradition seems right for summer. All these characters are drenched in sweat, I think, both sex- and heat- related, and as July rolls around in New York City I know I will feel in the mood for terse drama of sort that only a master like Cain can provide.
Brideshead Revisited
by Evelyn Waugh
One of the great ironic British writers. I realized, to my horror, that I only imagined I'd read the novel. In fact, I'd seen the mini-series about a million years ago on PBS, but hadn't read the novel. Having read other Waugh books (I swear!) I look forward to dipping in to the cool academic and elite worlds that Waugh handles with such grace and wit. Maybe, somehow, someday, a tiny fraction of these qualities with rub off on me...
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Summer Reading Lists
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