Wife
01 May 2025
Imprint: Picador
Synopsis
'A bravura portrait of a marriage in meltdown' – The Observer
Wife is the bitingly witty new novel from the prize-winning author of The Exhibitionist, Charlotte Mendelson.
Dr Penny Cartwright is everything that Zoe Stamper is not: glamorous, sophisticated and openly gay.
When they begin a passionate affair, a lifetime of wedded bliss seems within Zoe’s grasp.
But this is not a love story....
Details
01 May 2025
384 pages
9781529052831
Imprint: Picador
Reviews
Poleaxed after finishing this. Charlotte Mendelson at her soul-searing best. Narcissistic monsters and suffocating families are quite the specialty of hers, but Wife is just unbearably brilliantNigella Lawson, bestselling author of Cook, Eat, Repeat
'This is a love story,' Zoe tells the reader, and it is, profoundly so, in the end. But I'll remember it more as a thriller, for the way Mendelson manages to make what looks from the outside like a sad but unremarkable day – packing, Tube journeys – feel like sweaty offcuts from The Bourne Identity . . . God, you want Zoe to get away. Does she? Better read the book.The Sunday Times
A family saga of great insight, with another magnificently grotesque villain at its heartThe Observer
A clever, lacerating account of coercive control . . . a finely executed novelFinancial Times