Feb 15 2008
Week #1: The Senator’s Wife
What are your thoughts about the book so far? Just a few questions to start us off - How are Meri and Delia’s predicaments similar/different? Is your heart as heavy as mine for the life Delia has chosen with her husband, the unfaithful Senator? Does Meri’s snooping in Delia’s correspondence give her the full picture of the couple’s history? What about the pregnancy - will Meri ever feel joy in having Nathan’s baby? And do you think Meri and Nathan will experience the kind of love Delia and Tom have found together, despite Tom’s infidelity?
Those are just a few questions popping into my head at the moment, but feel free to discuss any others that you may have.
12 Responses to “Week #1: The Senator’s Wife”
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It made me sad when Meri started snooping in the papers. It seems that their two lives are quite similar. The both seemed so young and immature when they married and married with certain assumptions of what life was. Then life happened, choices have to be made. How you cope in the face of those events colors who you are and what you become in life, and Delia did the best she could in the times in which she lived. She chose a life that worked for her, to a point. It had its positives and negatives, as I am sure that Meri’s will. Nathan is upward in his career, and Meri’s pregnancy was unexpected and early in the marriage. And there is her upbringing that is bringing a lot of history to the story, abusive mother, her own. How will she cope? Is she scared?
oops….spoiler alert…speaking of snooping. I’m only on page 19 - I just picked the book up on Wednesday so I guess I better not come back until I’ve read another 80 pages or so - they’ve just bought the house. Shouldn’t be a problem this weekend - lots of time for reading.
I have to say though, I was shocked that Meri is 27/38 at the start of this book - she really did strike me as much more immature, judging from her intro - I pegged her at being in her early 20s.
@Becca - I didn’t catch much about her upbringing - did I miss the abusive mother part? =:o
@Holy - Oh no!!! Sorry for being a spoiler, that was not my intent. I agree about the age thing and was shocked like you. How can she still be living in an apartment working for the college in her late 30’s? I guess… whatever. Seems strange anyway.
Once she gets pregnant, there is a lot about her self doubt about becoming a mother due to her upbringing at the hands of her mother. There is a spot in the book coming up…spoiler…with a child…not hers…where her thoughts will bear this out. Trust me.
I’ll be looking out for that part… and will try not to finish the book this weekend. It’s really good.
I’ve got another book that I’m reading alongside it to keep me in pace with everyone else, and a ‘Everyday with Rachael Ray’ magazine. Need to hold back while Holy catches up with us!
OK, I’m caught up - I knew it wouldn’t take long.
I like the book - light yet subtle. My first impression is that there’s a lot of sex - it goes without saying, giving that the book is about intimacies, both shared and lost.
I’m still in Paris with Delia and Nancy so I’m not sure what to make of Meri’s snooping but I like the foreboding hint on page 88, while she was snooping - “as she remembered everything that happened after that between her and Delia”….
And Meri’s envy of how Tom and Delia’s love, how ever fragmented, is so rich and raw - unlike her self-professed safe and predictable marriage with Nathan.
I’m baffled though, on how Delia can have such tender feelings for Tom, despite knowing he’s continually unfaithful. That is unfathomable to me.
I wonder, if and when Tom and Meri meet, if there will be an affair between them? Hmmmm….
@Holy - Whoa, now there’s a possible twist - Meri & Tom?! Now that would be a serious betrayal.
Going back to Delia’s feelings for Tom, it’s one thing to be there for him during the election, and quite another to continue being there for him intimately then and beyond. She seems to have made herself out to be quite the doormat, IMHO.
Evan & Nancy should’ve talked some sense into Delia when the iron was still hot. It’s all so sad for her.
Holy & itchick, hmmm…that is all I am going to say on that one…
I wonder if Delia’s actions towards Tom come in a day and time when women in the political sphere she walked in did not want to be seen as the woman scorned, especially for the much younger, prettier, set? I wonder if that is why she gets the apartment in Paris. Why she stays with him through the election and stays married. Punishing him, and yet keeping the lifestyle, at least monetarily, that she had become accustomed to? Well heeled, traveled, raised children, basically alone. I wonder if the intimacy aspect of the relationship was something that maybe she forgave him his indiscretions, but could not forget. She accepted his foibles and loved him anyway. I wonder if he knew about hers? I think that the fact that they were still intimate, while sad, sad something, not sure how to word it, I am not sure that dysfunctional is the right word, after all they had been married for decades by then. Comfortable for them?
As much as I can see where you are coming from on Evan and Nancy, would you really your children telling you what you should do with your husband, should you find yourself in that sort of situation? I am sure they would mean well, but they don’t live behind the closed doors of the marriage. They can’t possibly know all the down and dirty details, and I respect Delia for telling them both to basically let her do as she felt led to do. Even if they did not agree.
@Becca - You have quite a bit if keen insight on the life/time of the spouses of politicians. Personally? I haven’t a clue, but I sense you are right. But by taking the apartment, she might have ‘punished’ Tom in the financial sense, as well as herself by living a life in wait for his return to her. She denies herself and lives false hopes, like they have that much more time in their lives to return to that ‘Happy Ever After’? I don’t think so.
As for the children knocking some sense back into her, I’m speaking out of experience after watching my mother suffer through 3 marriages and 2 divorces. The kids are always the closest points of contact within the family to know anything negative that may be taking place behind closed doors, thus they are therefore the most important people to speak up under such circumstances. Delia was oblivious and needed someone to bring her to reality. The kids were the ones to do it, and their efforts failed. However unfortunate.
Her decision and later ones do seem unfathomable but as Becca says, it gives her some measure of power and co-dependence and status quo. She is nothing if not an enabler, as her son called her.
Brenda, your comments remind me of a close friend who recently went through a divorce. She desperately wanted to take back her abusive, cheating hubby but her teen daughter, who I attended university with, played tough love with her mom and said are you insane, wake up and smell the coffee.
So far I’m not liking the narrative bounce back and forth - there doesn’t feel like enough obvious connection between the two women but maybe it will still come - I’m at chapter 11 though….jeesh….
Confession? It is good for the soul, right?
I finished the book. Hey it is only a 10 hour listen on Audible. It was quite nice to listen to.
I am not going to say any more, but I did like the book!
@Holy - the bouncing back & forth messes with my way of thinking! I’m just sayin’.
@Becca - You’ve gotten me interested in hearing the voices in the audible, but seeing the printed word and feeling the book/pages in my hands is way too hard to give up. (I love that seeing & feeling thing.)
Glad you liked it - now we must keep you on for the final wrap-up. Don’t go too far!