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Book Summary and Reviews of My Wife's Affair by Nancy Woodruff

My Wife's Affair by Nancy Woodruff

My Wife's Affair

by Nancy Woodruff

  • Critics' Consensus (2):
  • Readers' Rating (2):
  • Published:
  • Apr 2010, 288 pages
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About this book

Book Summary

Georgie and Peter, very much in love, move to London with their three children. Once there, Georgie's dormant acting career takes off and she wins the role of Dora Jordan in a one-woman show. Dora Jordan was the most famous comic actress of the eighteenth century (she had thirteen illegitimate children, including ten by the future king of England).

As Georgie rehearses for her part, she becomes increasingly drawn to Dora Jordan, who she sees as a working mother with struggles exactly like her own. And when Georgie can no longer fight her attraction to the playwright, she begins an affair with tragic results.

Narrated by Peter, a failed-writer -turned-businessman, My Wife's Affair is about infidelity, passion, duty, and about finally getting what you want and then wanting still more.

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Reviews

Media Reviews

"Starred Review. Woodruff...leaves not a dry eye in the house in this gripping ode to theater and the love it can command—and crush...It's brutal and lovely." - Publishers Weekly

"[M]elodramatic foreshadowing seems too strong for the story." - Library Journal

"A slight story, thinly characterized, but narrated with some poise." - Kirkus Reviews

"Woodruff soars in this searing chronicle of the dissolution of a marriage and a family." - Booklist

This information about My Wife's Affair was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.

Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.

Reader Reviews

Write your own reviewwrite your own review

Elizabeth

Keep Reading...don't put it down...a haunting ending
I was wavering between a 4 and a 5 the entire way through the book, and then the ending brought it all the way up to a 5/5.

The book is narrated by Georgie's husband...it goes back and forth telling about the life of Dora Jordan also an actress/comedian who Georgie portrays in a one-woman show and Georgie's life with her husband and three boys.

Georgie left the stage in New York to be a stay-at-home mother, but now that her husband has been transferred to London and the children are enrolled in London schools, she wants to go back to work in the theater.

Georgie lands the role as Dora Jordan on her first tryout. The play is a hit for Georgie, and she ends up traveling and leaving her husband and children for long periods of time and having an affair with the director. Her heart aches every time she leaves her children, but she still won't give up the touring. The ending will haunt you long after you turn the last page.

....you will enjoy the book and not want to put it down.

Valerie F.

Ugh
Ugh. Although this story seemed to have potential, especially in its interesting parallel between the characters and the play. But it ended up being just frustrating and full of unpleasant characters, and the ending was just stupid.

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Author Information

Nancy Woodruff

Nancy Woodruff received her MFA from Columbia University. She taught writing at Columbia University and SUNY/Purchase before moving to London in 1997 for 8 years. Woodruff currently teaches at NYU and lives in Brooklyn. This is her second book following Someone Else's Child 2000

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