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Good Wives
Good Wives
Nov 26, 2024 1:49 PM

Author:Margaret Forster

Good Wives

What is a 'good wife'? The bestselling author of Hidden Lives explores four marriages, including her own, in different times and societies to find the answer.

In 1848 Mary Moffatt became the wife of the missionary and explorer David Livingstone - and her obedience and devotion eventually killed her. In 1960, Margaret Forster married her school sweetheart Hunter Davies in a London Registry Office - and interpreted the role very differently. Between these two marriages is a huge gulf in which the notion of marriage changed immeasurably.

Forster traces the shift in emphasis from submission to partnership, first through the marriage of one unconventional American, Fanny Osbourne, to Robert Louis Stevenson, in the late nineteenth century; and then through that of Jennie Lee to Aneurin Bevan in the 1930s.

Why does a woman still want to be a wife in the twenty-first century? What is the value of marriage today? Why do couples still marry in church? These are some of the questions Forster asks as she weaves the personal experience of forty years through the stories of three wives who have long fascinated her.

Reviews

Forster gives a fascinating and eminently readable account of these women's lives and their marriages, and in doing so raises many questions regarding the changing relationship between the sexes

—— Spectator

The star...emerges as Forster herself

—— Times Literary Supplement

Lively and highly enjoyable

—— Sunday Telegraph

Fascinating, compellingly written

—— Independent

Forster raises crucial questions, and provides some provocative answers about what it means to be a wife, good or otherwise

—— Mail on Sunday

Instead of prescriptive dos and don’ts to stop the little darlings from murdering each other, the authors suggest roles to suit different situations.

—— Families Magazine

Thanks for the advice. I will definitely try these techniques.

—— Rosy Bennett, AskAMum.co.uk

With wit punctuating lambent nostalgia, Erica Heller brings her father to life in an animated, absorbing fashion, documenting his quirky habits, celebrity, and "invisible, unfathomable inner cycle," but also her parents' divorce and Heller's suffering with Guillain-Barre syndrome. The total effect is akin to leafing through a bulging family scrapbook where one finds a few blurry images among many snapshots in sharp focus. Erica Heller has inherited her father's finely tuned flair with words

—— Publishers Weekly

Intimate, yet well-researched..comedic and poignant, her many-faceted memoir is rendered in high-definition as Heller recounts meals, travels, parties, arguments, lies, and the serious illnesses that afflicted her and her parents. Writing with wit, compassion, aplomb, and no little wonder at what her father wrought and her mother endured and how this legacy shaped her, Heller presents an involving and invaluable work of personal and cultural history.

—— Booklist

Heller's family memoir brims with warm reflections right from the opening chapters... An affectionate family scrapbook crafted with a bittersweet blend of humor and pathos

—— Kirkus Reviews

Erica Heller to me is like a Carrie Fisher on the East Coast. She is as authentic as they come

—— Richard Lewis, comedian, actor, author

Erica Heller has a story to tell and I for one am eager to see it in print. I think this is going to be one hell(er) of a memoir

—— Christopher Buckley, author of Losing Mum and Pup

The New York of the period leaps off the page

—— Emma Hagestadt , Independent

Heller's domestic side is evoked with painful detail by his daughter, Erica, in her well written, occasionally harrowing memoir, Yossarian Slept Here

—— Sunday Times

Likeable memoir...just as Daugherty is blind to the limitations of Heller's work so he appears resistant to personal criticism of Heller or rebuke. Just One Catch is no hagiography but, of these two biographical accounts on Yossarian Slept Here gives us the gruff, arrogant big shot; the smug cocky fellow who sometimes showed up to friend's cocktail parties for the sheer fun of insulting them

—— Leo Robson , Financial Times
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