A mere two novels into her
career, New York Times writer Alex Witchel is already treading on Henry James
territory as a chronicler of wealthy Manhattan. She isn't the only contender
for that position, but she's one of the better ones: The Nanny Diaries and The Devil Wears
Prada are
too focused on fish-out-of-water outside perspectives; Dana Vachon's Mergers
And Acquisitions
is too flippant, and The Fortress Of Solitude too Brooklynite.
Witchel's second book, The Spare Wife, serves up a skirmish in the firmament of the
Upper East Side with all the careful maneuverings of a Jamesian fortune hunter,
one of which serves as the book's villain.
As "a middle-aged divorced
widow who didn't get nearly as much money as she could have," Ponce Morris has
salvaged her single-woman social life by cultivating herself as a couple's best
friend, equally versed in sports and shopping. As The Spare Wife opens, the
model-turned-lawyer is at a dinner party, quietly greasing the wheels at every
turn, from seating the lecherous husband away from his former flame to
comforting the soon-to-be-divorced hostess over her custom-built bidet.
Unfortunately for Ponce, the one guest she blows off after the
party—Babette, an editorial assistant at a Vanity Fair stand-in called Boothby's—spots her sneaking
around with Manhattan's best (married) fertility doctor, and decides to report
on the affair with or without Ponce's cooperation, to prove she has the chops
to write for the magazine.
Witchel's ridiculous
device of calling her smug, seemingly unflappable heroine Ponce wears out its
welcome after a few chapters (unlike the comic absurdity of an Undine Spragg),
but by and large, The Spare Wife plays like lesser Edith Wharton—same
obsession with the bona fides of proper society, though much more sex. In its
best moments, the novel stares into the steely hearts of its characters and
slashes away at their undisguised hauteur. Ponce, her best friend Shawsie, and
their friends occasionally lapse into Gossip Girl-worthy histrionics over
the ravages of rumor, but Witchel's voice scornfully taps them into place,
sometimes using minor characters like the personal trainer who trades in gossip
to stir up business. The closer the book inches toward a revenge play, the less
that grounding voice is heard, but the finale manages to wind back up into a
tight comedy of bad manners.