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Women beware women: Wife, by Charlotte Mendelson, reviewed

The claustrophobic bullying in this story of a lesbian marriage that sours is so well done it’s nauseating

10 August 2024

9:00 AM

10 August 2024

9:00 AM

Wife Charlotte Mendelson

Mantle, pp.368, 18.99

Charlotte Mendelson has been described in the Times as a ‘master at family drama’, and her previous novel, The Exhibitionist (2022), contained in Ray Hanrahan one of the most odious fictional husbands ever. Mendelson clearly has an appetite as well as talent for writing awful spouses. In her latest novel, Wife, Penny Cartwright is if anything even worse.

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