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I look to sequels to continue my relationship with the characters I liked in the first book.
REVENGE OF THE MIDDLE-AGED WOMAN was, in my mind, a truly successful book in that it gave me Rose, a woman whose life was destroyed by a manipulative younger woman, yet who rose (her name being all the more appropriate) above what happened and embodied the old adage that living well is the best revenge.
Rose was likable and memorable, and I wanted her to succeed. I wanted to see her come out from under the pain of her failed marriage and blossom. And I disliked --- with a capital D --- Minty Lloyd, the above-mentioned manipulative younger woman who stole Rose's husband Nathan from her and then added insult to injury by stealing her job, too.
REVENGE was Rose's story. WIVES BEHAVING BADLY is Minty's. Now married to Nathan seven years later and with twin boys, Minty is the cliché second wife. Nathan's longtime friends have not accepted her. Nathan's children with Rose barely tolerate her. And, to top it off, Nathan dwells in nostalgic desire for his former life. Recognizing this, Minty says, "memories do not obey commands. You cannot pronounce that the past is in the past. It is there. Dug in." Married life is not the bed of roses she had dreamt of: "the silences that characterized Nathan's and my life together were deceptive, for they were noisy with the unsaid." In need of something beyond marital blisslessness, Minty opts to return to work, only to be reminded there that she is not the chic, hip youngster she was when she left the business world. She is surrounded by former versions of herself and the threat that comes with that.
Rose's ever presence --- in the lives of the children, on late night television shows, in Nathan's journal --- taunts Minty, as it should. She cannot escape what she did. Nor should she.
The strongest redeeming quality of WIVES BEHAVING BADLY is that whatever negative feelings we had for Minty in REVENGE are reconfirmed here. It is difficult to find something about Minty to like. Buchan could have written a sequel to her highly successful REVENGE that made the reader feel for Minty or that followed Rose's new life. Instead, she took a more realistic approach and showed Minty to be the petulant husband-stealing woman she is --- even after she's settled into what should be the perfect marriage, family and home.
WIVES BEHAVING BADLY is successful in that it reminds us that getting what you want doesn't always prove to be a happy ending --- especially if getting what you want is something that belongs to someone else.
--- Reviewed by Roberta O'Hara
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