Revenge of the Middle-Aged Woman by Elizabeth Buchan

This is a Book Week book review for Wednesday’s Holiday Reading theme.

Rose is a successful books editor. She is married to Nathan, also a newspaper editor and they have two grown-up children, Poppy and Sam.

The book is an exploration of Rose’s turning her life round after and through a number of bombshells, the first of which is Nathan leaving her for Minty – Rose’s deputy on the Books pages.

Interspersed through the book are scenes from her earlier life, with glimpses of close family life and Rose’s struggles with being a stay-at-home mother, and then her new struggles of being a working mother – there is a particularly poignant bit where her son gets very sick and she is attempting to balance her responsibilities to her employer and those to her son; a balance that many working mothers would relate to.

All the characters in the book are well-rounded and sympathetic – there are even glimpses into Minty’s mind and the problems she has managed to land herself with, in settling down with an other woman’s husband (glimpses which will presumably be enlarged upon in the sequel The Second Wife). Even the minor characters are painted in great detail – Ianthe, Rose’s hard-working mother; Mazarine, one of Rose’s university friends; Hal, Rose’s erstwhile lover whose spectre has haunted her marriage through many years; Alice, Sam’s unsuitable girlfriend…

This is a thoroughly enjoyable book, and Elizabeth Buchan writes it beautifully, too.