Lives of the Wives: Five Literary Marriages
3/5
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About this ebook
A New York Times Notable Book of the Year
A Washington Post Best Nonfiction of the Year
One of PEOPLE's Top 10 Books of the Year
"Delicious and infuriating...unputdownable." —Sadie Stein, New York Times
"A compulsively readable book." —Wall Street Journal
In Lives of the Wives, author Carmela Ciuraru offers a witty, provocative look inside the tumultuous marriages of five famous writers, illuminating the creative process as well as the role of money, fame, and power in these complex and fascinating relationships.
The legendary British theater critic Kenneth Tynan encouraged his American wife, Elaine Dundy, to write, then watched in a jealous rage as she became a bestselling author. In their early years of marriage, Roald Dahl enjoyed basking in the glow of his glamorous movie star wife, Patricia Neal, until he detested her for being wealthier and more famous. Elizabeth Jane Howard had to divorce Kingsley Amis to escape his suffocating needs and pursue her own writing. In the marriage of the Italian novelists Elsa Morante and Alberto Moravia, it was Morante who often behaved abusively toward her cool, detached husband, even as he unwaveringly championed his wife’s talent and work. The most conventional partnership is a lesbian couple, Una Troubridge and Radclyffe Hall, both of whom were socially and politically conservative and unapologetic snobs.
Lives of the Wives is an erudite, entertaining project of reclamation and reparation, paying tribute to the wives who were often demonized and misrepresented, and revealing the price they paid for recognition and freedom.
Carmela Ciuraru
Carmela Ciuraru is the author of Nom de Plume: A (Secret) History of Pseudonyms, and her anthologies include First Loves: Poets Introduce the Essential Poems That Captivated and Inspired Them and Solitude Poems. She is a member of PEN American and the National Book Critics Circle, and she has been interviewed on The Today Show and by newspapers and radio stations internationally. She lives in New York City.
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Reviews for Lives of the Wives
4 ratings1 review
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5I did not care for this book. It is a story of how 5 women capitulated to the whims of their writer husbands to the detriment of their own careers/life. The book follows couples Una Troubridge and Radclyffe Hall, Elsa Morante and Alberto Moravia, Elaine Dundy and Kenneth Tynan, Elizabeth Jane Howard and Kingsley Amis, and Patricia Neal and Roald Dahl.I was personally only interested in the Neal/Dahl story, which was quite sad, because the others were relatively unknown to me, although I have heard of a few of them. Just a bunch of people giving up their dreams to be a "wife" to an egotist. My recommendation? Skip it.