The Wrong Sort of Wife? – Elise Chidley

Lizzie Buckley’s life looks perfect – she has two beautiful twins (one of each), a gorgeous husband, upper crust in-laws, and a beautiful house. But she’s exhausted from having barely slept in the three years since Alex and Ellie were born, women ignore her marriage in their rush to drape themselves over James, she knows she’s not close to good enough for her snobby titled mother-in-law, and the perfect house is on the grounds of her husband’s family home – perfectly and immaculately furnished and decorated before she was on the scene, Lizzie feels more like a tenant than the woman of the house.
In an outburst of frustration, exhaustion and angst, Lizzie spills everything in an email to her sister –her appreciation of her husband’s business trips, her seething resentment every time she has to get up during the nights while he fails to stir, and her utter lack of interest in sex. Perhaps she needs a break from marriage. Instead of sending the email to Janie, though, Lizzie realises (as soon as it’s gone) she sent it to James. Before she knows it, Lizzie and the kids are living in a squalid house in the country, while James works out the fastest way to get a divorce.
The Wrong Sort of Wife? is the best kind of chick lit – Lizzie is engaging and real, and Chidley has done a strong job of conveying the unacknowledged labour of motherhood, and the effect this has on women. In her intermittent therapy sessions with the apparently unhelpful Ivana, Lizzie begins to discover the deeper issues running through the fabric of her marriage, and how it could be that James has reacted the way he has.
There are certainly some irritating elements, particularly Lizzie’s transformation from dowdy and fat hausfrau into a lean, sun streaked marathon-running machine. The exercise is fine, it certainly does create endorphins, and this alone doesn’t magically transform Lizzie’s life, though I can’t help but see disempowering subtext (attention all women: you’ll never get or keep a man without being physically perfect – lose the weight, shave your legs, colour your hair!). However, this is something one comes to expect in the genre, and I can let it go.
Letting it go is made easier by the character creation – Lizzie’s friends, her new love interest, Ivana, and the children – Chidley has their voices just right, a realistic blend of toddlerish insight and destruction, with not quite enough cuteness to be twee. In many books the pragmatic aspects of young children are sidelined in the interests of the greater plot; in The Wrong Sort of Wife? they are integrally woven into the fabric of the text. The plot is fresh and more firmly grounded in reality than most, the obstacles between Lizzie and the husband she still loves are not too forced, and there are some nicely tied up secondary plots (that rely only slightly on coincidence). This is Chidley’s first novel, and I’m very interested to see what she writes next. - Alex