Fun among spouses and houses
ClAIRE CALMAN’S last book, Growing Up for Beginners, featured Roger, a monster of a husband, who cloaked his controlling ways in pretended concern for his “naughty little wifey”. The fun of the book came from working out just when and how “wifey” would leave him.
So, when reading Calman’s latest
A Second Hand Husband, I was primed to treat said husband, Carl, with some suspicion. He seems lovely — caring, sexy, and he’s found a dream house for new wife Natalie, but wait… he’s just ringing her about it. He has to put in a bid at auction right now — without Natalie even seeing it? And, hmm, it’s in the same village as his ex-wife and children.
“Carl’s a wonderful man, but I wouldn’t say he’s an absolute stickler for the truth,” narrator Natalie tells us. “He’s not a liar or anything, but he’s in PR and sometimes he has a slight tendency to… to… varnish the truth a tiny bit.” Enough said! I settled in to enjoy seeing Carl get his come-uppance.
All the ingredients are here for a perfect holiday read, including immensely satisfying property porn, as Natalie takes on Carl’s impulse purchase
— a cottage missing large amounts of roof, blighted by woodchip furniture, brown carpets and many nettles — and gradually makes it beautiful. There’s well-observed comedy of village life, as Natalie encounters confident, rich ex-wife Antonia, who has a worrying habit of referring to Carl as “our husband”, despite having a new one of her own. There are many laugh-out-loud moments, as Antonia patronises everyone in sight, and Carl blunders around getting everything wrong.
But it’s not all played for laughs.
All the ingredients are here for a perfect holiday read
At the heart of this book is an authentic and recognisable pattern, in which a husband tries to please his wife, and gets it wrong, and a wife tries to do the same, with similar results. Calman’s insight and empathy is such that there is even a hope of redemption for truth-polishing Carl.
“In my view, every marriage is different It’s no use having flat rules that are supposed to work for everyone. They won’t.” Natalie’s mother tells her, before dropping a considerable bombshell about her own former marriage. Carl and Natalie’s attempts to work out their own rules give the reader much to enjoy, and an ending to warm the most cynical of hearts.