My Wife's Affair

Starred review from November 23, 2009
Woodruff (Someone Else's Child
) leaves not a dry eye in the house in this gripping ode to theater and the love it can command—and crush. Former actress turned restless suburban New Jersey mom-of-three Georgie and her journalist husband, Peter, transplant to London for Peter's new job. There, Georgie finds her way back to the theater and lands a role in a small one-woman production of “Shakespeare's Woman,” playing famous 18th-century British stage actress Dora Jordan. It's a part that consumes Georgie from the start, notes Peter, who achingly chronicles his wife's affair with her part and, eventually, with playwright Piers. Georgie's tour de force as Dora comes from her total recognition of the character—“Two hundred years later and it's exactly the same thing,” Georgie tells Piers—and her life as Dora and as Piers's lover begin to take precedence over her husband and children. Peter's excruciating autopsy of his crumbling marriage is unsparing and relentlessly punishing, but the kicker at the novel's end makes the adultery feel like a cozy little tea party. It's brutal and lovely.

February 1, 2010
Business writer Peter recounts his relationship with his wife, Georgie, an actress whose several-year stint as stifled stay-at-home mother ends abruptly when the family moves to London. Georgie gets the chance of a lifetime to star in a one-woman play, and she grabs it, despite conflicting emotions about leaving her children. She soon loses herself in the role of Dora Jordan, a famous 18th-century actress who, after a wildly successful career, 13 children, and a decades-long love affair with the Duke of Clarence, died penniless and alone. Caught up in the heady excitement of acting again, Georgie falls for Piers, the charismatic playwright, and in days her mostly happy marriage is in ruins. VERDICT Woodruff offers some thoughtful insight into modern marriage and draws many parallels between women's circumstances in the 18th century and today. However, melodramatic foreshadowing seems too strong for the story. It's not until the final page that Woodruff drops a bombshell, creating an abrupt, unsatisfying ending. Readers interested in the real Dora Jordan would be better served with a biography.Christine Perkins, Bellingham P.L., WA

Copyright 2010 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

March 1, 2010
Woodruff, author of Someone Elses Child (2000), soars in this searing chronicle of the dissolution of a marriage and a family. Transferred to London, journalist Peter Martin and his wife, former actress Georgie Connolly, grab at a chance to revitalize their lives after spending the last few years raising their three young sons in a drab New Jersey suburb. London seems like a dream come true to born and bred New Yorker Georgie, especially after she lands the role of a lifetime, playing eighteenth century actress Dora Jordan in a one-woman show by acclaimed playwright Piers Brighstone. As Georgie becomes inextricably involved in the play, the parallels between Doras life and her own become more and more compelling, distancing her from the husband and the children she loves. When Georgies obsession extends to Piers, the foundations of her life as a wife and a mother begin to crumble. Woodruff takes the unusual step of narrating the affair from Peters point of view, a choice that makes reading about it even more heartrending. The shocking twist at the conclusion of the book will leave stunned readers gasping for air.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2010, American Library Association.)