I'm not into women's books. They annoy me much in the same way that a veruca will annoy you. However the case of "Revenge of the Middle Aged Woman" I will make an exception to my rule, well who said rules weren't made to be bent whenever is necessary!
This is a deliciously entertaining book about Rose, her adulterous husband Nathan, the other woman, the diabolical Minty (a rather fragile she devil) and Rose's oddball grown up children Poppy and Sam.
The plot centres around Nathan's affair with the brittle but beautiful Minty and the affect it has on Rose, his wife of many years. When the affair finally becomes public Rose has lost not only her husband but her job too. However Rose is more resilient than she thinks and bit by bit she finds herself shedding her previous life, and heading down a path she might have taken if she had not chosen to marry Nathan.
Add to this a cast of quirky characters like Rose's eccentric mother Ianthe, an ancient cat called Parsley, Richard, the man Poppy marries suddenly in Thailand, a suicidal ex-girlfriend of Sam's and Hal the man Rose might have taken up with if she hadn't chosen Nathan and you have a novel to make you laugh and cry in the same breath.
Page by page we are treated to Rose's rebirth as a new woman, no longer in Nathan's shadow, no longer the wronged wife. With each trial and tribulation Rose rises to the fore and survives even the most bitter of blows. Like when she is forced to sell the marital home she finds herself able to exhale and move on to the next task at hand. And in the background Nathan is finding that life with the "other" woman isn't all it is cracked up to be and that Rose the wife that he had complained confined him, is now the one that is free.
Funny, heart rending and totally absorbing, "Revenge of the Middle Aged Woman" is a book for those people who can honestly go with the old Spanish proverb, "Living well is the best revenge..."
