McDAID'S WIFE

by Jill Anders ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 1988

A dreamy, sensitive, and rather lovely first novel about a long-suffering woman married to a boorish Irish poet. Tessa McDaid lives in Berlin with husband William, a hard-drinking poet who has been invited to Germany for a year to teach and work. He immediately continues a long string of infidelities by taking up with a young, beautiful, and arrogant German girl named Anneliese, leaving Tessa alone with their three small boys, far from her family (in South Africa). When the passive Tessa finally confronts him with his affair, William berates her, beats her, and tells her to get herself a man. She's finally driven to leave him and the children and run away to England, where she stays with an old friend outside London and decides to begin a new life--even sleeping with a young student she meets. But Tessa is plagued by guilt over her children; when she receives a letter from he r nine-year-old describing his loneliness (and Anneliese's clumsy attempts to befriend the boys), she returns to Berlin--but only to claim the children and leave McDaid, for good, at last. More an extended short story than a novel--slight, fragile and a little tenuous; but Anders writes of Tessa McDaid with intelligence and sympathy that continually engage the reader.

Pub Date: March 1, 1988

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Marion Boyers--dist. by Kampmann & Co. (9 East 40th St., New York, NY 10016)

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1988

Categories: FICTION