"The moment I decided to leave him, the moment I thought, enough, we were thirty-five thousand feet above the ocean, hurtling forward but giving the illusion of stillness and tranquility. Just like our marriage." So opens Meg Wolitzer's compelling and provocative novel The Wife, as Joan Castleman sits beside her husband on their flight to Helsinki. Joan's husband, Joseph Castleman, is "one of those men who own the world...who has no idea how to take care of himself or anyone else, and who derives much of his style from the Dylan Thomas Handbook of Personal Hygiene and Etiquette." He is also one of America's preeminent novelists, about to receive a prestigious international award to honor his accomplishments, and Joan, who has spent forty years subjugating her own literary talents to fan the flames of his career, has finally decided to stop.

From this gripping opening, Wolitzer flashes back fifty years to 1950s Smith College and Greenwich Village — the beginning of the Castleman relationship — and follows the course of the famous marriage that has brought them to this breaking point, culminating in a shocking ending that outs a carefully kept secret.

Wolitzer's most important and ambitious book to date, The Wife is a wise, sharp-eyed, compulsively readable story about a woman forced to confront the sacrifices she's made in order to achieve the life she thought she wanted. But it's also an unusually candid look at the choices all men and women make for themselves, in marriage, work, and life. With her skillful storytelling and pitch-perfect observations, Wolitzer invites intriguing questions about the nature of partnership and the precarious position of an ambitious woman in a man's world.

"[The Wife] features amazingly crafted prose....Complete with a staggering twist ending, this is not one to miss." Library Journal

"Meg Wolitzer has ripened into a chanteuse of a writer, a Dietrich of fiction." Los Angeles Times

"As Joan recounts the misery she and her fellow writers' wives endure, popular and shrewd novelist Wolitzer choreographs her ire into kung-fu precision moves to zap our every notion about gender and status, creativity and fame, individuality and marriage, deftly exposing the injustice, sorrow, and sheer absurdity of it all." Booklist

"Never before has [Wolitzer] written so feverishly, so courageously....Hers is a wholly original voice." The Washington Post

"[A]n eviscerating and acerbically funny novel....Wolitzer keeps us guessing right up until the gut-wrenching twist of a finale." Entertainment Weekly

"Here are three words that land with a thunk: 'gender,' 'writing' and 'identity.' Yet in The Wife, Meg Wolitzer has fashioned a light-stepping, streamlined novel from just these dolorous, bitter-sounding themes. Maybe that's because she's set them all smoldering: rage might be the signature emotion of the powerless, but in Wolitzer's hands, rage is also very funny." New York Times Book Review

"Forty-five years of a bad marriage laid out in pat detail....Connect-the-dots predictable except for those occasional tasty morsels of nastiness." Kirkus Reviews

"[Wolitzer's] hilarious gripes about marriage make this tale a pleasure best indulged in away from your better half." People Magazine

On the eve of her husband's receipt of a prestigious literary award, Joan Castleman, who has put her own writing ambitions on hold to support her husband, evaluates her choices and decides to end the marriage.

When Wolitzer published her first novel, "Sleepwalking, " she received extraordinary critical acclaim for her humor, grace, and intelligence. Now, in her sixth novel, she has maintained the qualities that thrill readers, and introduces a character and subject matter that are her most ambitious, provocative, and powerful to date.

"The moment I decided to leave him, the moment I thought, enough, we were thirty-five thousand feet above the ocean, hurtling forward but giving the illusion of stillness and tranquility. Just like our marriage." So opens Meg Wolitzer's compelling and provocative novel The Wife, as Joan Castleman sits beside her husband on their flight to Helsinki. Joan's husband, Joseph Castleman, is "one of those men who own the world...who has no idea how to take care of himself or anyone else, and who derives much of his style from the Dylan Thomas Handbook of Personal Hygiene and Etiquette." He is also one of America's preeminent novelists, about to receive a prestigious international award to honor his accomplishments, and Joan, who has spent forty years subjugating her own literary talents to fan the flames of his career, has finally decided to stop.

From this gripping opening, Wolitzer flashes back fifty years to 1950s Smith College and Greenwich Village — the beginning of the Castleman relationship — and follows the course of the famous marriage that has brought them to this breaking point, culminating in a shocking ending that outs a carefully kept secret.

Wolitzer's most important and ambitious book to date, The Wife is a wise, sharp-eyed, compulsively readable story about a woman forced to confront the sacrifices she's made in order to achieve the life she thought she wanted. But it's also an unusually candid look at the choices all men and women make for themselves, in marriage, work, and life. With her skillful storytelling and pitch-perfect observations, Wolitzer invites intriguing questions about the nature of partnership and the precarious position of an ambitious woman in a man's world.

Meg Wolitzer's highly praised books include Sleepwalking, This Is Your Life, and Surrender, Dorothy. A recipient of a Pushcart Prize, whose short fiction has also appeared in The Best American Short Stories, she is a frequent contributor to the public radio show "The Next Big Thing." She lives in New York City with her husband and two sons.