Monday, July 22, 2013

The Last Original Wife by Dorothea Benton Frank

This book was okay, not great, for an easy reading distraction.  It is about the title middle aged woman who is the last original wife remaining in her husband's group of friends.  All of the others have been replaced by newer, younger models.  The book alternates between the perspectives of the wife, Les, and her husband, Des.  Les is not impressed with the bimbos her husband's friends have married and Des wants her to spend more and more of her leisure time with them.  Dissatisfied with this, and the general laziness of her two grown children, Les leaves her Atlanta home to spend time in her home town of Charleston, living with her gay brother who Des never approved of.  There she finds a life she prefers - though she does return home to nurse Des through an illness.  All of the characters were a bit too self-absorbed for my liking - I never really sympathized with any of them.  There were, however, some extremely funny scenes like when two of the bimbos, now abandoned by their older husbands, get drunk and crash the society wedding of one of their ex-husbands and moon the crowd with misspelled messages on their behinds.

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