Everything She Thought She Wanted: A Novel - Hardcover

Buchan, Elizabeth

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0670033731 ISBN 13: 9780670033737

Publisher: Viking Adult, 2005

Synopsis

A married mother of two grown children, forty-two-year-old Barbara Beeching embarks on an unexpected affair with a younger man at the expense of everything she has ever known, while Siena, a career woman in her mid-thirties, re-evaluates her chosen childless state in the wake of her husband's hopes about parenthood. 80,000 first printing.

About this title

About the Author

Elizabeth Buchan is the author of nine books, including the bestselling Revenge of the Middle-Aged Woman and the prizewinning Consider the Lily.

Reviews

The separate stories of two women--one a career-driven late-20th-century professional and the other a 1950s housewife--are awkwardly juxtaposed in this third novel by British author Buchan (Revenge of the Middle-Aged Woman; The Good Wife Strikes Back). Thirty-five-year-old Siena Grant enjoys a life that many women only dream of. A highly successful fashion consultant with her own business, a magazine column, a book deal and an American television show, Siena is also married to a loving, sensitive man. She and Charlie live in a trendy flat and enjoy intimate little suppers. What more could anybody want? For starters, Charlie is dreaming of a country home and children--not a life that appeals to the oh-so-chic Siena. Meanwhile, in 1959, 42-year-old Barbara Beeching, a married mother of two grown children, lives with her pilot husband, Ryder, in a charming country home and hosts the most delightful little parties. Perfect partners, Barbara and Ryder survived the atrocities of war over England and now face the rest of their lives as Ryder thinks of retirement and Barbara thinks of... Alexander Liberty, a hunky psychiatry student whose passion for her takes her by surprise. The ungainly setup--the two stories only glancingly connect at the novel's conclusion--is partly mitigated by Buchan's warm writing and her realistic portrayal of the choices women continue to face, but this isn't quite up to the standard of her previous two outings.
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With just the right blend of heartfelt feminism and humor, British author Buchan (Revenge of the Middle-Aged Woman, 2003) crafts another women's-crisis story that accurately captures the doubts and fears about personal fulfillment experienced and rarely resolved by two generations of women. The drama begins with Sienna, a young, successful British fashion consultant in the present, whose "psycho-situation" with her husband, Charlie, centers on his desire for children and hers to pursue a television opportunity in the U.S. Then the camera pans to Barbara, who, in 1959, meets an attractive younger man and suddenly finds her life as a well-groomed farmwife constricting. In alternating chapters, Buchan uses these two women's experiences to portray women's changing values in the twentieth century, from home and family to career and family, and the difficulties real women have in balancing their suddenly disparate priorities. Without falling into trite stereotypes, Buchan affectionately reveals Sienna and Barbara in a thoughtful melange of scenes that most women will find compelling. Jennifer Baker
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Edition details

• Publisher: Viking Adult
• Publication date: 2005
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0670033731
• ISBN 13: 9780670033737
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 368