Synopses & Reviews
Synopsis
In I Am Not Your Wife, Samantha Baxter--wife, mother, poetry professor--learns she has breast cancer and then ruins her own life.
Tumbling through a catastrophic midlife crisis, she gives herself permission to partake in behaviors she's observed in her male colleagues, including having an affair with a student her daughter's age, ranting at board meetings, and telling her poetry students what she really thinks of their work.
Underneath biting, witty narration lurks a childish, confused, and unrealized adult woman hell-bent on destroying her relationships and professional life, all within the span of a few weeks.
Part comedy, part tragedy, I Am Not Your Wife dramatizes the emotions that lie behind our inhibitions--and the consequences of unleashing them.
Synopsis
Many of us would say that a medical crisis like cancer does not give a person license to be an asshole. But we are not Samantha Baxter--wife, mother, respected poetry professor--who realizes how dissatisfied she is with her life when she comes face-to-face with her mortality. In a novel that is part academic send-up, part mid-life crisis impulse fantasy, we follow Sam in the three weeks between diagnosis and surgery as she spectacularly blows up her life. She does what she's watched her male counterparts get away with: has an affair with a student her daughter's age, rants at board meetings, and speaks truth to her poetry students about their terrible work. Of course, there are consequences, but it's a hilarious and emotional ride that ultimately asks of the reader: if you were faced with death, how would you live your life?
"Sexy and sad, dark and funny, ruthless and kind, this is Rachel DeWoskin's ferociously feminist masterpiece. Every page of it glitters with rage and with love...It radiates with truth." --CHERYL STRAYED, NYT-bestselling author of Wild, Tiny Beautiful Things, Brave Enough, and Torch
"Banshee is the kind of book every woman I know wishes she'd written. Fierce, necessary, honest, a burn-it-all-down scorched earth policy to the toxic masculinity of this Age of Terror." --Emily Rapp-Black, author of Poster Child and The Still Point of the Turning World
"Raucous, white-hot, and page-turning brilliance...A singular and vital reading experience." --Gina Frangello, author of A Life in Men
Synopsis
Samantha Baxter has a full, sane life--creative job, lovely family, and all the trappings of middle-age happiness. But when she gets a diagnosis that terrifies her, a lifetime of polite pleasing and putting others first ignites in her a surprising, pure rage. Maybe Sam will survive the surgery, and maybe not, but either way, she'll spend the next three weeks burning her life down: sleeping with a student her daughter's age, speaking every truth she's ever swallowed, and refusing to apologize for her wildest, most essential self.
"Sexy and sad, dark and funny, ruthless and kind, this is Rachel DeWoskin's ferociously feminist masterpiece. Every page of it glitters with rage and with love...It radiates with truth." --CHERYL STRAYED, NYT-bestselling author of Wild, Tiny Beautiful Things, Brave Enough, and Torch
"A wicked, delicious ride towards an ambivalent redemption--angry, hilarious, all too true." --ALLY SHEEDY, actress and author
"Banshee is the kind of book every woman I know wishes she'd written. Fierce, necessary, honest, a burn-it-all-down scorched earth policy to the toxic masculinity of this Age of Terror." --Emily Rapp-Black, author of Poster Child and The Still Point of the Turning World
"Raucous, white-hot, and page-turning brilliance...A singular and vital reading experience." --Gina Frangello, author of A Life in Men