My Husband's Girlfriend

August 7, 2006
The author of My Daughter's Boyfriend
re-sifts and comes up with an irresistible title based on a cool-headed premise. Anya Meadows suffers from FSAD—Female Sexual Arousal Disorder ("a condition that affects 47 million women for a variety of reasons"). To keep her husband Neil ("a taller, thinner, less insane version of Mike Tyson") from leaving her and daughter Reese, she proposes a contract: find a girlfriend, sort of: oral sex only, encounters no more than twice a week, no falling in love. The book opens, alas, with Anya sitting at home, awaiting word on the birth of Neil's new son, Braxton, with Neil's contract-girlfriend (and co-worker) Danielle. Rax shifts the book's first person among the three principles fluidly: Anya loves her stay-at-home-mom lifestyle, dependent on Neil's job as a capital projects manager at a local Houston college. Trying-to-do-the-right-thing Neil loves Anya, but also cares for the few-class-tiers-lower Dani, who is (in her own words) "spirited, decent-looking, employed, fun-loving, supportive." But among other drama, Neil's boss finds it unacceptable that a married, "high-profile" member of the department is "openly having babies with someone else." Rax manages the fallout from her exaggerated plot with insight, zip and wit, and airs multiple conflicts within black middle-class life in compelling detail.