Book Review : A Mean-Spirited Look at Losers, Morons and Lust

A Woman’s Guide to Adultery by Carol Clewlow (Poseidon Press: $17.95. 224 pages)

The other day at a business lunch for writers, a middle-aged man, forgetting there were two women present, remarked with a cheery smile, “Well, at least we don’t have women’s liberation to worry about anymore. That’s ancient history!”

“A Woman’s Guide to Adultery” proceeds off that assumption, which gives rise to a passel of other assumptions: That men are in the driver’s seat, that sex for men is fun, that sex for women means suffering, that it’s a hard world for women, etc., etc., etc. And--if you’re 23 and prefer to go out with married men; if you prefer to complain about mean men while you’re getting your manicure, this is definitely your kind of book. If you’re anybody else, this book is as strange as if a lady who ate spaghetti three times a day and gained weight then wrote a furious book denouncing spaghetti.

“A Woman’s Guide to Adultery” is a book about four women friends who only fool around with (excuse me, fall in love with) married men. “Let’s face it,” one of them says, “given my age and the unavailability of single men, not to mention their inferior quality, I really have no choice. If I want sex, and I do, I have to accept that the men will be married.”

Each to her own taste, of course, but in this book, the fact that “good” women are forced to love married men is presented with the same unquestioning belief as, for instance, that communism is bad and flossing your teeth is good. As far as the author is concerned, the only men worth loving are married. She’s serious about this.

But He Loves Another

What you get, then, is an elaborate score card of characters: Jennifer loves David, a disagreeable poet. Jo loves Martin, a Socialist Party hack. Helen loves Ray, a businessman. And Rose (our heroine) loves Paul, a generic academic charmer who grazes happily among his female students (seven girlfriends in nine years of marriage; but who’s counting?). The trouble is: David is living with Francie, his high school sweetheart. Martin is married to Margaret, who has let her perm grow out and has three kids. Ray is married to Sandra, a beautiful woman who has big breasts and dresses in bright clothes. And Paul is married to Monica, whom he says he loves. OK?

The trouble is, Rose has ethics. (The subtitle of this book, which we only see on the back, because it won’t sell copies), is “Thinking About Monica,” and Rose thinks a lot about Monica. Rose only lives by one commandment, she tells the reader at one point. Thou shalt not hurt another woman. But Rose starts breaking that commandment in a big way because the sex is so Hemingway-esque (see Page 122 for flossy sex from before the days of women’s liberation). Rose doesn’t want to hurt Monica, but she does because she just can’t help herself. And, toward the end of the novel, as Paul is brushing Rose off, she tells a girlfriend: “And now I’m shocked to the core that he doesn’t love me. . . . He thought we were both just in it for a good time. Love was never on the agenda.” (Well, isn’t that just the way it is, girls?! Pass the Danish pastry and the steam curlers, make abortion a crime again, and let’s have a gab fest! Men are beasts and women were made to suffer!)

Two Separate Parts

The trouble is, such a mindset makes for very peculiar writing. The book has those two titles, and two very separate parts. The first half is viciously against women: Helen, Jo and particularly Jennifer are painted here as a species far lower than toads.

But, in the second half here, the men--Martin, Ray, David and Paul--are also painted as a species far lower than toads. The men made those girls do it. Don’t you see? They victimized their wives and mistresses with their low desires and their devious ways. Everything gets blamed on them, including a bad case of breast cancer.

I have two things to say about this. One is to “other women,” whatever their walk of life. Fooling around with married men is asking for trouble, whether “women’s liberation” is in effect or not. Second, this book may serve as a harsh reminder of what the war between the sexes was like before what we call “women’s liberation” came into effect. Is that really what we want again? Men seen as snuffling wart hogs and women as drooling morons?

Clewlow can write very good sentences, but her thought processes are mean-spirited at best, and, at worst, schizophrenic.