Wife 22

Maybe it was my droopy eyelids.
Maybe it was because I was about to turn the same age my mother was when I lost her.
Maybe it was because after almost twenty years of marriage my husband and I seemed to be running out of things to say to each other.

But when the anonymous online study called “Marriage in the 21st Century” showed up in my inbox, I had no idea how profoundly it would change my life. It wasn’t long before I was assigned both a pseudonym (Wife 22) and a caseworker (Researcher 101). And, just like that, I found myself answering questions.

7. Sometimes I tell him he’s snoring when he’s not snoring so he’ll sleep in the guest room and I can have the bed all to myself.

61. Chet Baker on the tape player. He was cutting peppers for the salad. I looked at those hands and thought, I am going to have this man’s children.

67. To not want what you don’t have. What you can’t have. What you shouldn’t have.

32. That if we weren’t careful, it was possible to forget one another.

Before the study, my life was an endless blur of school lunches and doctor’s appointments, family dinners, budgets, and trying to discern the fastest-moving line at the grocery store.

I was Alice Buckle: spouse of William and mother to Zoe and Peter, drama teacher and Facebook chatter, downloader of memories and Googler of solutions. But these days, I’m also Wife 22. And somehow, my anonymous correspondence with Researcher 101 has taken an unexpectedly personal turn. Soon, I’ll have to make a decision—one that will affect my family, my marriage, my whole life. But at the moment, I’m too busy answering questions.

As it turns out, confession can be a very powerful aphrodisiac.

It takes a bit to get used to the way the story is told using various forms of social media, Google searches, emails and Alice's answers to the survey questions.  Once I got the flow of the book I was hooked.  Even though Alice is a few years younger than I am, and at times I did not like her,  I could relate to her life.  This is laugh out-loud funny at times. I saw the ending coming and thought Alice's way back was not as complete as I would have wanted. An entertaining debut novel.

Author: Melanie Gideon
Published: May 2012
Pages: 400
Genre: Women's Fiction
Source:  LibraryThing Early Reviewer/Random House
Finished: 5-4-12
3 Bears



This complimentary review copy was received thankfully from LibraryThing Early Reviewer Program and Random House Publishing Group and in no way influenced my review of this book. These are my personal thoughts and reactions to the reading of the book.