Elizabeth Buchan - The Good Wife Strikes Back

PENGUIN BOOKS

The Good Wife

Praise for Revenge of the Middle-Aged Woman

In Buchans witty hands, it is fate, the most satisfying entertaining mischief maker, which proves the undoing Sunday Times

Buchan is brilliant at creating memorable characters poignant, oddly uplifting and intelligent Sunday Mirror

Extremely readable, well-written, funny and sad Daily Mail

A compassionate and thoughtful portrait of a marriage in crisis and a woman bent on survival Woman & Home

Buchans portrayal of Roses emotions from shock, betrayal and anger to a gradual acceptance of her situation sets this novel apart from other tales of midlife crises Good Housekeeping

Fresh, compassionate and alarmingly perceptive I love it Sian Phillips, Actress

What a terrific book! Fay Weldon

Intelligent and uplifting Sainsburys Magazine

Miss Buchan skilfully sets the serendipitous scene where hungry Nemesis hovers This is a compelling read Country Life

Bitter-sweet charm Sunday Tribune, Dublin

The Revenge is not about cutting up his suits or pouring away his collection of vintage wines, for Elizabeth is much too suble a writer for that a resonant and excellent novel SW Magazine

Praise for Secrets of the Heart

Celebrates human resilience and flexibility confirms her skill as a storyteller Independent on Sunday

In this latest of her acutely intelligent novels, Buchan proves she is not only a powerful romantic novelist, she is a nice one too The Times

A finely written, intelligent romance Mail on Sunday

Beautifully observed and richly detailed, the writers powerful prose has the ability to move emotions Evening Herald

A finely balanced, superior love story Sunday Mirror

Elizabeth Buchan lives in London with her husband and two children and worked in publishing for several years. During this time, she wrote her first books, which included a biography for children: Beatrix Potter: The Story of the Creator of Peter Rabbit. Her first novel for adults, Daughters of the Storm, was set during the French Revolution. Her second, Light of the Moon, took as its subject a female undercover agent operating in occupied France during the Second World War. Her third novel, Consider the Lily, hailed by the Sunday Times as the literary equivalent of the English country garden and by the Independent as a gorgeously well-written tale: funny, sad, sophisticated, won the 1994 Romantic Novel of the Year Award. An international bestseller, there are over 320,000 copies in print in the UK. Her subsequent novel, Perfect Love, was called a powerful story: wise, observant, deeply felt, with elements that all women will recognize with a smile or a shudder. Against Her Nature, published in 1998, was acclaimed as a modern day Vanity Fair brilliantly done and Secrets of the Heart was praised by the Mail on Sunday as a finely written, highly intelligent romance, without any of the slushiness usually associated with the genre. Revenge of the Middle-Aged Woman was described by The Times as wise, melancholy, funny and sophisticated. Her most recent novel is The Good Wife.

Elizabeth Buchan has sat on the committee for the Society of Authors and was a judge for the 1997 Whitbread Awards and Chairman of the Judges for the 1997 Betty Trask Award. Her short stories have been published in various magazines and broadcast on BBC Radio 4.

For further information on Elizabeth Buchan and her work go to www.elizabethbuchan.com

ELIZABETH BUCHAN

PENGUIN BOOKS

PENGUIN BOOKS

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First published 2003
15

Copyright Elizabeth Buchan, 2003
All rights reserved

The moral right of the author has been asserted

Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publishers prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

For Margot

Her price is far above rubies

Proverbs 31, 10

Many thanks are owed to Vanessa Hannam and Deborah Stewartby for their kindness, generosity and patience in answering my questions about life as an MPs wife. Any mistakes are entirely mine. I am also extremely grateful to Emma Dally for sending me Complete Wine Course by Kevin Zraly (Sterling Publishing, New York). I borrowed details for (my) Casa Rosa and the visit to the Etruscan tombs from Frances Mayess Under the Tuscan Sun (Bantam Books), from Iris Origos War in the Val dOrcia (Cape), and from Tim Parkss An Italian Education (Vintage). Also information and anecdote on being a Member of Parliament from Gyles Brandreths Breaking the Code (Phoenix). With apologies also to Jane Austen. A huge thank-you is also owed to my brilliant editors Louise Moore and Christie Hickman, to Hazel Orme as always to Stephen Ryan, to Keith Taylor, Sarah Day and the rest of the Penguin team. Also to my agent Mark Lucas, Janet Buck and, of course, to Benjie, Adam and Eleanor.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that one persons happiness is frequently bought at the expense of anothers.

My husband Will, a politician to his little toe, did not entirely get the point. He maintained that sacrifices in the cause of the common good were sufficient in themselves to make anyone happy. And since Will had sacrificed a significant slice of his family life to pursue his ambitions as, first, a promising MP, then a member of the Treasury Select Committee, then minister, andlatterlyas one who was tipped to be a possible Chancellor of the Exchequer, it followed that he should have been supremely happy.

I think he was.

But was I?

Not a question, perhaps, that a good wife should ask.

If you ask some people what it means to be good, they reply that it is to tell the truth. But if you are asked by the huntsman which way the fox went, and you tell him, does that mean you are good?

On our nineteenth wedding anniversary, Will and I promised each other to be normal. To this end, Will carried me off to the theatre, ordered champagne, kissed me lovingly and proposed the toast: To married life.

The play was Ibsens A Dolls House, and the production had excited attention. Although I could see that he was aching with tiredness, Will sat very still and upright in the seat, not even relaxing when the lights went dim. An upright back was part of the training he had imposed on himself never to let down his guard in public. Although I am better than I used to be, I am still laggardly in that department. It is so tempting to slump, hitch up my skirt and laugh when my sense of the ridiculous is tickled and there was much in our life that was ridiculous. Politicians, ambassadors, constituents, coffee mornings, chicken suppers, state occasions a wonderful, colourful caboodle replete with the ambitious and the innocent, the failures and the successes.