The Mistress's Revenge

April 18, 2011
Cohen's debut reads as if Paddy Chayefsky had written Fatal Attraction. The book unfolds in the epistolary form via Sally Islip's journal addressed to Clive Gooding, a man who jilted her after a long affair. A bracing dose of black humor comes from imagining Clive's growing horror at learning that his ex-lover has befriended his wife and grown children. And the way that Sally describes Clive adds salt to the deepening wounds: at various points she mentions his overweight appearance, his impotence during their first tryst, his overinflated ego, his "sludge-colored eyes." And after Sally anonymously publishes a thinly veiled autobiographical account of their affair, Clive's paranoia reaches a breaking point. As Sally emotionally unravels, someone (could it be Clive?) hacks into her e-mail account and sends rude notes to her employers, destroying her livelihood. This should be cause for concern, but her investment in revenge overshadows all. There's a limit to how much punishment the author can pile onto her characters before the reader tunes out, and Cohen pushes past it, stripping the humor from the dark.

May 1, 2011

Spiraling down from fatal attraction to woman on the edge of a nervous breakdown, English freelance journalist Sally Islip responds to rejection by her lover of five years with increasingly loopy behavior.

Dumped heartlessly over lunch by Clive Gooding, her serial-philanderer of a lover, Sally is advised by her therapist to keep a journal of emotions and address her scathing, heartbroken, obsessive account of the present and past to the man now putting her through the emotional wringer. Via e-mail, text and bespoke cell phone, the relationship, begun in Devon, later moved to London, has passed along the conventional arc of attraction, seduction, immersion and eventual withdrawal. Sally, who has a partner and two children, believed Clive when he said they would have a life together, and now that it's over, she can't accept it. Instead, she infiltrates herself into Clive's household, befriending his wife Susan and their two children while neglecting her own family and her work, abusing her prescription tranquilizers and running up tremendous debts. Clive responds with anger and threats while simultaneously planning the renewal of his marriage vows. A bad end is unavoidable.

While Cohen's clever, sardonic voice diminishes the sense of predictability, this one-note story can, like the affair itself, seem ultimately rather empty.

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Starred review from May 15, 2011

Sally Islip is stricken when Clive Gooding ends their five-year affair, which included her suspected pregnancy (it turned out to be the onset of menopause) and his proposal (despite his already being married). Feeling as if her heart has been torn from her body, Sally starts a journal addressing Clive, detailing the relationship that started as a friendship when she, a freelance journalist in a long-term partnership, did work for him, an older married semifamous maker of television documentaries. Unwilling to let go of Clive--even with his "long, illustrious, blindingly successful career of infidelity"--Sally in a spiral of depression insinuates herself into his family's life as readers experience a growing sense of foreboding. VERDICT In brisk, compulsively readable prose, Cohen details an obsession that is sure to end badly, its most painful aspect being the effect on Sally's children. As obsession turns to lust for revenge, the question is who will be hurt and how, and the answer comes as a surprise. British journalist Cohen displays considerable skill as a storyteller in this engrossing first novel. [See Prepub Alert, 12/20/10.]--Michele Leber, Arlington, VA

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