Review: The Other Woman

The Other Woman by Ellen Lesser
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Again, I read this with a bias since I am readying to work with Ellen at the end of the summer, but, still, it’s pretty good. I read the first part of it with admiration, paying attention to the narrative choices she was making and trying to trace the way she brought her character(s) into focus. Then, I read the second half with enjoyment, genuinely wondering how Jennifer would resolve her situation.

The story here is deeply clever. Jennifer is in love with Richard, a married man, and things open as she prepares for his son’s first visit to her home. She’s been drafted as a quasi-mother, someone expected to nurture a near stranger, and she isn’t ready for it. That’s a striking perspective on the “affair” story, and there’s real poignancy in it.

The part I most admire here is the way Lesser carefully excavates the backstory without slowing the momentum of her present tense recounting. This is a short and quick novel – one that feels always to be moving – but it gets a lot done in that space. This is all of Jennifer’s life in her time in Vermont, and we come gradually to see how circumscribed her relationship with Richard has made it.

The voice is always good. We get a sense of Jennifer unpacking her circumstance at every turn. She makes me mistakes, she tries to learn from them, and she tries very hard to grow. I quibble with the reviewer who claims this is a story of Jennifer’s growth. I think, in the end, this is more a story of how she works backwards, of how she needs several months with Richard’s broken family to realize the extent of her mistakes. She needs all that time to discover her mother’s trite lesson: work to make your own family. Love the people who are given to you wholly rather than those who commit only partway and then demand more from you.

I admire the lower-case f feminism of the work. Jennifer may have made questionable choices, but Lesser gives her full opportunity to be human. Her story matters because it is hers, and that’s a deep commitment to an equality of experience.

If I have a ‘wish for more’ with this one, it’s that I’d like more on Richard. On the one hand he’s such a consistent ass that I don’t see what attracts Jennifer to him. On the other, I’d like a little more insight into how he’s feeling as his ex-wife effectively manipulates him.

Still, as I say, good stuff, and all the more fuel for my anticipation of working with Ellen later.


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