Synopses & Reviews
Every couple has a wish list.
Maya wants
Nick to come home earlier
To engage with their children
To engage with her
Nick wants . . .
A divorce
Having decided that their marriage is over, Nick is determined to leave quickly and with dignity. But when he looks into the financial realities of splitting up, he realizes that more of his hard-earned income than he can handle will go to Maya.
Then a mutual friend proposes that Nick improve the marriage in order to end it amicably, because the better father and husband he is, the more self-sufficient Maya becomes and the cheaper his pay-out will be at the end.
But as Nick sets out to be a better man, he starts to feel like one. Time with his kids, dinners with his wife, fewer hours in the office has the strange effect of making him happier. As Maya starts to feel appreciated by her husband again, she starts to blossom, to unclench her fists from the parenting reins and start to do things for herself.
Nick and Maya feel like they are falling back in love. How odd, how funny, how serendipitous. But if Maya knew what had promoted this marital metamorphosis? Then it would be war.
A BETTER MAN is the story of a modern marriage on the rocks, how we constantly change in and out of relationships, and the price of love.
Review
"Witty. . . . McLaren's writing is crisp and her characters are surprisingly fresh, resulting in a novel that celebrates breaking away from the expected."--Publishers Weekly
Review
"Savvy, insightful, and hysterically funny. I absolutely loved it."--Lauren Weisberger
Review
"Leah McLaren is a wit for the ages."--Toby Young, author of How to Lose Friends and Alienate People
Synopsis
What if the only way you could get out of your marriage was to become the perfect husband? Nick and Maya Wakefield's relationship has been in crisis since Maya left her high-powered legal career to stay home with their now 3-year-old twins. Today she feels invisible, anxious, and under-appreciated, and Nick has checked out of family life. Sex is a distant memory and the love is gone.
A workaholic and a consummate flirt, Nick has decided he wants out. But he balks when their old friend, a divorce attorney, shows him that as sole breadwinner, he stands to lose the most. Together, he and his friend hatch a plan: Nick will act like an ideal husband and father in order to ease the pain of leaving and make out better in court. So he encourages Maya to go back to work, spends time with the kids, and even takes her on a vacation without them. But with his cynical ruse comes a surprising change of heart. Nick is astonished to find his actual emotions match his act and now his marriage is truly on the mend. That is, until Maya finds out, and Nick's world falls to pieces. Now his only hope of saving his family is to prove to his wife that he really is the man he was pretending to be. A BETTER MAN is a sharply observant novel of the pitfalls of marriage and success, and how one couple must lose it all before they can hope to find their way back.
About the Author
Leah McLaren is a novelist and journalist who is a longtime columnist for Canada's national newspaper, the Globe and Mail, and the Europe correspondent for Maclean's magazine. In 2013, she won a gold National Magazine Award in the long features category. Her first novel, The Continuity Girl, was published by GCP in 2007. She lives in Toronto and London, England, where she shares a home with her husband and son.