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Sep
22
Book Review: The Other Woman edited by Victoria Zackheim
2008 at 9pm Posted by Rebecca Joines Schinsky
In The Other Woman: Twenty-One Wives, Lovers, and Others Talk Openly About Sex, Deception, Love, and Betrayal, editor and contributor Victoria Zackheim presents a collection of autobiographical essays by women who have cheated or been cheated on, or both. These women are straight, gay, and bisexual; they are married, single, divorced, and re-married. They are intelligent. They know better. Their words ring with truth and the echoes of pain both given and received.
Pam Houston, whose book Cowboys Are My Weakness I reviewed here, opens the collection with a fantastic piece entitled “Not Istanbul,” which is written in the second-person narration she knows so well. She begins:
Here’s the thing about the other woman. She lives inside your head. She may live on the next street or in the next town or halfway across the world; she may be five-two or five-nine; she may be rail thin (never skinny) or voluptuous (never fat). But however big or small she is, however much space she takes up in the world, will never compare to the amount of space she’ll take up in your brain. It is there that she will spread herself from wall to wall, eating gift-wrapped chocolates—so many gift-wrapped chocolates that she will ooze into every nook and cranny of your cerebrum, until you won’t be able to think of anything else. And if you let her take up residence there, no matter when you cut her off, no matter how hard you try to starve her, you may never, ever, get her out.
This is a nearly perfect opening, as it sets the tone for many of the pieces in this collection, in which women writers of all walks of life share their experiences with The Other Woman, and it leads very well into the essays that follow. Twenty-one pieces is a lot to cover in a review, so I’ll stick to giving you some highlights.
In “Palm Springs,” Mary Jo Eustace tells of the weekend her husband Dean told her he was leaving her….for Tori Spelling…while they were on vacation in Palm Springs. She had noticed him sneaking off to make phone calls and participating less and less in their family life, and she was devastated when he revealed that he had fallen in love with his co-star and that they had agreed to leave their spouses and start a life together after knowing each other for just three weeks. When Eustace protested, “But we just adopted a baby together,” her husband had the gall to tell her, “I’m not leaving the kids, or the family…I’m leaving you.”
She captures her emotions and experience with keen awareness:
I’m not really sure at this point if this is a dream or not…the difference between before and after is so huge, so life-altering, that you’re not sure if it is really happening.
Reeling from her husband’s revelation, Eustace pulls herself together to return to the children she left playing in the pool (with friends supervising) and recalls
I put my hand on the glass door and push it open to the outside world. I’m surprised to see that it has remained the same, when I have become so different.
While Houston, Eustace, and many of the other contributors write about their experiences as the victims of infidelity, many also write about what it’s like to be The Other Woman. They write about the thrill, the excitement of illicit pleasure, the guilt, and the joy that happens when it occasionally works out. In “Sheba,” Sherry Glaser tells of leaving her long-term partner Birdy and transitioning from a bisexual life to one that is wholly lesbian with Sheba, a woman she has admired from afar for several years. Glaser’s story conveys lust and tenderness and passion, and she helps us understand how it is that one comes to cheat one’s partner. She makes The Other Woman and the Cheater sympathetic, and I didn’t hate her for it. In fact, “Sheba” was one of my favorite pieces in the collection.
Another favorite, which was also the most difficult to read, was “The Man with the Big Hands” by Maxinne Rhea Leighton, who writes about her experience of childhood sexual abuse, saying,
I became the other woman at six.
She shares the ways in which the long-running abuse at the hands of a man she once trusted and admired affected her ability to be faithful in relationships as she left home and got away from Big Hands:
Beginning life away from home did not change that I remained the other woman. I dated men where I was the other woman to their mother, ex-girlfriend, job, pet. I wanted a monogamous, non-secretive, committed relationship, yet I remained a minor league player rather than a major league pitcher.
In “My Life as a Muse,” Aviva Layton describes her affair with a married poet for whom she served as artistic inspiration. The headiness and flattery outweighed her guilt, and when she got what she wanted and finally became The Wife, she discovered that another Other Woman had already entered the scene, fulfilling her new husband’s pathological need for the art-inspiring drama of the love triangle.
The Other Woman is an interesting, varied collection of essays by women writers I respect, envy, and occasionally loathe. Their voices are honest, their stories are true, and they make no apologies for where they have been. These essays were compelling and thoughtful—and they made very interesting reading for someone so recently married—but they lacked some of the can’t-put-it-down-ness that I was hoping for. I’d recommend this collection for anyone interested in the multifarious forms of relationships and infidelity and who appreciates the complexity and messiness that happen any time two people decide to try to live their lives together. Fans of essays and those interested in exploring notions of sexuality and the social construction of marriage and relationships will also find The Other Woman a worthwhile read. 3.75 out of 5.
Visit Victoria Zackheim’s website here.
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The comment about the other woman living in her head makes a lot of sense to me. I’ve never been in that situation, but that would be the worst part about it for me. Also, I had no idea that Dean left his wife for Tori after THREE WEEKS! That’s insane.
I don’t think I could read this book. Honestly, it would probably make me paranoid LOL. Seriously, though, it sounds like a very interesting book.
Thank you for the lovely review of The Other Woman. Creating this anthology was truly a labor of love. I had the honor of working with exceptional women, gifted authors all, most of whom were telling their story for the first time.
Yours,
Victoria
Welcome, Victoria! Thanks for visiting and sharing your experience.
Oh great review!!! I’ll have to see if I can find this.
[...] began the week with a book review of The Other Woman, a collection of essays by women writers about relationships and [...]