The Spare Wife: A Novel

by Alex Witchel

Ponce Morris is a beautiful, rich widow who's known as ?the spare wife? because she's the perfect companion to the wealthy, powerful, New York couples in her elite social circle. She throws elegant dinner parties, goes to sports events with the husbands, and shops with the wives. She's both flawlessly appropriate and coolly nonthreatening?everyone knows Ponce doesn't have a romantic bone in her body. Over the years, she has managed other people's lives?and her own?perfectly. Then Babette Seele, an ambitious, aspiring journalist, discovers that Ponce is having an affair with a socially prominent, very married man, and decides to break the scandal, turning Ponce's carefully calibrated world upside down. Witchel's sophisticated, witty, sexy satire provides a fascinating glimpse into the lives and loves of upper-class New Yorkers, sharply exposing the foibles of the fabulous.

Genres: Chick Lit, Fiction, New York, Contemporary

304 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2008

About the author

Alex Witchel is a staff writer for The New York Times Magazine and also writes "Feed Me," a monthly column for the Times Dining section. The author of the novels The Spare Wife and Me Times Three, she lives in New York City with her husband, Frank Rich.

Reviews

[Amy]

This book was a pointless waste of time. I read it in less than an afternoon and I was looking for something semi-mindless after my previous book. It was a stupid cliched story of a poor farm girl comes to NYC to become a model, marries up Anna Nicole Smith style, divorces, starts an affair with a friend's husband, gets caught by another young wannabe who marries up Anna Nicole Smith style and it doesn't even matter. Just don't read it. It wasn't even a fun pointless read. It was just pointless.

[Suanne Laqueur · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wow, what a ride. There were a LOT of characters to keep track of, I would’ve preferred maybe one or two less. But the high society intrigue was top notch.

[Lauren · Rating 2 out of 5]

A more upscale answer to Plum Sykes? These books are beginning to blur in my mind: Elements of Style, Bergdorf Blondes, The Good Life. Infidelity, gross wealth, obscene apartments, rapacious, scheming editorial assistants(!!), slimy husbands, sad sober women who don't like sex, but desperately want children, hot doctors that are too good to be true.

Yeah, onward and onward. I can't believe I read this, but a number of people whose names I will withhold have asked for this book so I figured I'd read it to see if there's something I'm missing.

Really, I'm not. You're not. But if you need a pseudo highbrow trashy book for the subway, this is a great one.

[Deb · Rating 3 out of 5]

Started off a little slow, but picked up after awhile. Yes, at first it was hard to keep track of all the characters and what their relation was to each other. And yes, it is extremely lightweight and some scenes didn't seem like they were fully developed, but I wasn't expecting this to read like Jane Austen or Henry James. I wanted something that was a summer read, and this fit the bill for a summer chick lit getaway.

[Laura Christoffersen · Rating 2 out of 5]

Dumb book. I wouldn't waste my time.

[Knotty · Rating 1 out of 5]

I grabbed this book at our Annual Book Sale, and the only reason why I read it was because it was small enough to fit in my purse for my airport jaunts. Basically, this book is mindless and pointless. In the fashion of Plum Skyes or Bergdorf Blondes (both terrible) this book is about New York socialites and their meaningless circles and deceptions. The book begins with a dinner party which sets up the plethora of characters. One thing I couldn't stand about this book was that the first chapter's voice was only around for one chapter. The main character is a woman named Ponce (yes, she was named after Ponce de Leon. This is totally tragic yet interesting) who is a Southern beauty who married up like Anna Nicole Smith and found her place among many "important" people. She's a widow and is called "The Spare Wife" since she is able to be friends with both people in a couple. She can direct any wait staff at a dinner party yet talk politics and sports with any man in the room. Everybody trusts her with their man. Well, this is where the book makes no sense whatsoever. A blonde beauty who seems to have it all with no man in her life is just a ridiculous plot point. That's like imagining Cindy Crawford as Mother Theresa. It just doesn't make sense.

The book has too many characters, and it is hard to keep everyone straight. Also, Ponce isn't so good after all since she is carrying on with an affair with a well-known fertility doctor that has miraculously impregnated every dried up woman in New York. Overall, I'd say skip this one. I am glad I had the book while I was playing airport standby roulette, but it is just pointless.

Jen's Rating: *

[Rowan Neve · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was very confusing. The pov sometimes changed in the middle of a page. It was hard to get into…
But when the drama came it got me wrapped. Who doesn’t love some drama?

'When I leave, by the way, please do not console yourself by thinking I’m jealous of you — because I’m not. Yes, my adolescence would have been a lot less painful if I looked like you, but you know what? I actually grew up. Not completely, not perfectly, but some. And as imperfect as I am, in every way, I have still felt more things — good, bad, high, low — than you ever have. And that’s enough for me. Actually, it’s everything'

'The older I get, the more I see there are these crevices in life where things fall in and you just can’t reach them to pull them back out. So you can sit next to them and weep or you can get up and move forward’

[Mary · Rating 2 out of 5]

I listened to this on audiobook. It got two stars because the narrator was very good. The story itself was complete fluff and I was never really invested in any of the characters. Very predictable in many ways. This work would not inspire me to read anything else by this author.

[Peggy · Rating 1 out of 5]

Dumb

[Leighanne · Rating 3 out of 5]

Light, chick lit. But I found myself wanting to read it in one sitting.

[Lisa Ahronian · Rating 2 out of 5]

Another book about people with tons of money and too much time on their hands.

[Kelly Parker · Rating 2 out of 5]

Never a good thing when you find yourself reading just so you can get to the end and start a new book.

[Archer Birmingham · Rating 1 out of 5]

Well, it was a quick read and it counts towards my reading challenge. Otherwise, it’s a book about a whole gang of terrible people doing horrible things, all the while thinking endlessly about everyone’s egregious physical flaws (ugh, she’s aging, how positively lower class!). I’m still not sure who I was supposed to be rooting for, as everyone was either vicious and selfish, or spineless and naive. Not one of the characters was relatable. Also, the pace was very strange - there was endless exposition everywhere, frequently interrupting what was actually happening. It didn’t feel plotted out at all, just kind of written as things occurred to the author. I’m glad, at least, that I’ll likely never think of it again.

[Terry Polston · Rating 3 out of 5]

The first 35 pages were boring with introducing a slew of characters at a party. Then there are about 100 pages of the exploits of a few of these people. Then there comes the young upstart desperate to mingle with all these people to get her foot into the door. She tried to create a scandal but since she is really just a dlut and a fraud, it fails. Then you get the unsatisfying ending where she gets the guy, but everyone hates her.
Of course the reader is not supposed to like any of the high society, middle aged women, and we don't.
I think this author read Jackie Collins but can't quite match the magic of A Woman of Substance because none of these woman has any.

[P Bright · Rating 1 out of 5]

I have a problem with the basics of this book. The heroine is a serial adulterer and the antagonist is the young idiot who decides to write an article about her uncovering her affair with a married man. They are both small and despicable so................who cares? It was supposed to portray the glamorous lifestyles of the rich and famous of Manhattan. It should have been written ironically mocking the whole ridiculous social structure. Now that might have been fun!

[Amy Gay · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was actually better than I was expecting. A nice, light read that is a satire of NYC elite society life. Reminded me of dramas one would see from medieval times relationships brought to modern times.

[Rachel · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was an easy read. I am glad I didn't read the reviews here before I started it....I may never had read it. As others noted, it started out slow, but it picked up. I found it to be an enjoyable story. Something to take my mind off of everyday life for awhile.

[Sue Pretty · Rating 2 out of 5]

About 200 pages too long. Ugh.

[Carol Pucak · Rating 3 out of 5]

so so per my notes

[Kate Kuse · Rating 2 out of 5]

Too many characters

[PHarrington · Rating 3 out of 5]

Short and quick read, but the story was not fulfilling for me.

[Vicki Loves to Read · Rating 2 out of 5]

A fun light read with some twists along the way.

[Pam F · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very slow reading but glad I finished it and didn’t give up.

[Liz · Rating 1 out of 5]

I finished this book on a couple of flights. If I had some other better thing to read that I hadn't already read, I would totally have skipped The Spare Wife, though. I agree with other reviews that the characters weren't well developed. I abhor the main character's name, Ponce, and I never grew to like her or any other character, including Shawsie. There are a lot of characters introduced in the first scene, and it is difficult to keep them all straight. There are a lot of scenes, too, that don't actually add to the story--even the opening of the dinner party doesn't set a strong tone or theme for the rest of the book. Unfortunately, the story doesn't get better as the page numbers progress.

[Susie Chocolate · Rating 2 out of 5]

A book I borrowed because sometimes, a girl just wants a light, fluffy read while she is excercising on her stationary bike and this is exactly that.

The book is about Ponce Morris, an upper East side NYC divorcee, socialite who is rich, thin and very plugged into the social scene. She is a socially upright and admired woman who has no skeletons in her closet... Or, so all think until an ambitious, social climbing journalist, finds out that Ponce is having a tordid affair with a very married, well known doctor and she threatens to break this news in the high society papers.

A very shallow and quick read.

[William · Rating 1 out of 5]

I found this book tedious - Barbara Walter's review on the back should have been my tip-off.

The characters were empty and dated (rollerblading? Paris Hilton?), and more importantly, they were never developed. Consequently, the action was always confusing. I found myself reading and re-reading pages trying to understand the motivation of a given character in a given scene.

On a scale of hip (Diablo Cody 10) to non-hip (Barbara Walters 0) this book ranks about a two.

[Barry Bridges · Rating 2 out of 5]

Every once in a while I step in to a muddy pond, but this turned out to be a half-empty pan of expensive bottled water left over from rinsing the feet after walking through Saks in Wal-Mart shoes. I can usually track characters pretty well, but this one kept making me stop and try to remember exactly who had cheated on whom and with what circumstance. Mindless read? Nope. Disappointing even for mindless.

[Joyce · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pure unadulterated chic lit. Incredibly wealthy women living on the upper East side in Manhattan, their trials and tribulations (affairs, unfaithful spouses and the like) and, of course, the "sweet young thing" who aspires to be just like them and the problems she causes. Fun reading for a long plane ride or trip to the beach!

[Carolynne · Rating 2 out of 5]

Review of AUDIOBOOK. Within a few minutes of listening to this book I was having difficulty following the narrative. Don't know if the reader was poor, or if the author was just cramming too many ideas into a sentence. At any rate, it was too much rambling, (fictional) namedropping, and cattiness to follow while driving a car.

[Molly · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book literally took me 3 years to read. I kept picking it up and putting it back down. At a certain point I just wanted it to be over but I hate abandoning books so I stuck with it. It just dragged on and on, and it’s only 300 or so pages. It wasn’t terrible. Just a slow read with not a lot going on.