"The Wife"

As you may have surmised if you have read any of my previous posts, I love to read and I love mysteries but, since my husband's death in May, I have been unable to get "into" a book.  Instead I've binge watched NCIS and other shows on Netflix.  I think there is hope that I may be picking up a book soon.  I have a mini vacation coming up and I am going to take some books with me.

I was at the library recently perusing their DVD's and chose five to bring home and decided I would watch  "The Wife" today.  It stars Glenn Close whose acting ability really shines in this piece.

It's about a couple who met when she was his student in a college writing class and he asked her if she was free to babysit his daughter so he and his wife could go out for the evening.  What Joan sees in that home is a wife who doesnt' really respect her husband.  Although the movie is set in their modern day life, flashbacks tell how they got together and enough about their past life that we can surmise the back story.

Their relationship dissolves his marriage and they marry and go on to have a son and a daughter (now expecting their first grandchild) while he becomes a famous novelist.  Joan was a writer in her own right but gave it up when a woman author her husband introduced her to as a student tells her that male publishers are not going to publish female authors and they're not going to promote their books either.  Instead books like the ones she has written sit unread on shelves in the college she graduated from.

Our story begins with Joan's husband receiving a phone call that he's receiving the Nobel Prize for his literary work and they will be going to Stockholm for the awards.  He insists Joan be on the phone before he hears the news that he has won.

They and their son, a budding author himself,  head to Stockholm and a young female photographer is assigned to shadow Joan's husband and take lots of pictures.  One day when Joan has decided she needs some alone time, she is approached by a young novelist who has been asked to write her husband's biography and her husband has refused to cooperate.  They have a drink together and  he mentions that he's met the ex-wife and daughter from her husband's first marriage.  He's also visited the college and read some of her early work that was published in the university magazine.  He proposes an outrageous theory that she is the actual author of all the books - not her husband.  That's when the movie becomes really interesting but you'll have to watch it and decide for yourself what is true and what isn't.  pazt