Later this year (August), Sony Pictures will release the film adaptation of Meg Wolitzer’s The Wife. Directed by Björn Runge, screenplay by Jane Anderson, and starring Glenn Close, Christian Slater and Jonathan Pryce, it looks interesting.
Wolitzer’s novel is published by Scribner in North America and Vintage in the UK (at the time of writing, the novel is a Kindle Monthly Deal in the UK, too). Here’s the synopsis:
A provocative story about the evolution of a marriage, the nature of partnership, the question of a male or female sensibility, and the place for an ambitious woman in a man’s world.
The moment Joan Castleman decides to leave her husband, they are thirty-five thousand feet above the ocean on a flight to Helsinki. Joan’s husband, Joseph, is one of America’s preeminent novelists, about to receive a prestigious international award, 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, Meg Wolitzer flashes back to 1950s Smith College and Greenwich Village and follows the course of the marriage that has brought the couple to this breaking point — one that results in a shocking revelation.
With her skillful storytelling and pitch-perfect observations, Wolitzer has crafted a wise and candid look at the choices all men and women make — in marriage, work, and life.
Meg Wolitzer’s latest novel, The Female Persuasion is out now, published by Riverhead in North America (out now) and Chatto & Windus in the UK (to be published in June).
Civilian Reader 