Charlotte Mendelson’s last book, 2022’s The Exhibitionist, was hailed for its frank and honest study of dysfunctional relationships. It was longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction and named Novel of the Year by The Times. With such accolades it comes as no surprise that Mendelson should return to themes of abuse and betrayal in her new novel, Wife – albeit with an important twist. This time around, the dysfunctional relationship is that between two women.
Mendelson is an extraordinary writer whose prose dips in and out of cliché without ever falling into it. Her characters are whole and complex, her tone crisp and familiar, her prose uncluttered and full of delightfully bitchy moments (of an unattractive woman, she writes: “she looked as if gravity had oppressed her”). She has created the world’s worst wife in the character of Dr Penny Cartwright, an Australian academic. Penny might also be the world’s worst person, full stop: bi-phobic, coercive and at times just plain evil.
Wife is capacious in scope, touching on issues shared across the gay community: how to come out, how to find your tribe, how to have a family
She preys on the weak and submissive Zoe Strampel, a specialist in Ancient Greek tragedy and our twentysomething protagonist, who she meets at a faculty music recital. Zoe is completely enamoured with the glamourous Antipodean – her life outside the closet with her partner, Justine, her confidence in all departments, academic and sexual. Mendelson paints an honest, at times discomforting, portrait of an abusive relationship that begins as an affair (Penny and Justine live together in Justine’s flat, Zoe moves in and Penny, who’s engineered the whole thing, is aghast at the idea that people might think they are a throuple). It ends in disaster.
The story starts at the end as Zoe attempts to leave the marital home. “No one explains how to walk out on someone who is ceaselessly present… who has forbidden you to go,” a friend who’s helping says. It then darts back to the beginning, with each new chapter signposted as “Then” or “Now”. For all Mendelson’s talent, this quickly gets tiring: I am tired of the postmodern fad for authors interrupting their own plotlines? Even artfully handled, it makes for a frustrating experience, like the author doesn't trust their own story to be told in a linear fashion. That said, it is slightly less annoying than more classic tropes of the LGBT canon, where books are divided into tomes with chronological leaps forward to separate them.
Wife is capacious in scope, touching on issues shared across the gay community: how to come out, how to find your tribe, how to have a family. Mendelson has talked beforeabout her own life experiences of coming out in her early twenties.
As far as stories of domestic car crashes go, this one is pointedly modern and feels like a necessary examination of what happens in relationships where seduction is rooted in power play. Mendelson calls into question our contemporary, kink-positive etiquette – which too often minimises abuse within a couple by writing it off as part of their tango. All of this does not make it an easy read. Zoe being insulted into submission in the early days of her relationship with Penny makes for a toe-curling experience. Some passages are outright triggering – though that is, of course, the point of literature and a testament to Mendelson’s gift for hyper-real fiction.
The Exhibitionist contained in the character of Ray Hanrahan, a study in terrible spouses within a heterosexual family unit. What’s special with Wife is the lesbian nature of the relationship, which admits a harsh and necessary truth: that gay couples, and gay parents, are just as prone to being awful as “the hetties”.
Wife by Charlotte Mendelson (Mantle, £18.99) is out now
