Lives of the Wives by Carmela Ciuraru

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This is an unusual idea for a book--it embeds the reader in five separate marriages where the partners both have a life in the arts. Some are both writers: the Italian novelists Elsa Morante and Alberto Moravia; the English novelists Elizabeth Jane Howard and Kingsley Amis. Others are not: Elaine Dundy, the first wife of the Observer theatre critic Kenneth Tynan, began by being an actor, only becoming a writer later; Patricia Neal, whose marriage to Roald Dahl lasted 30 years, was an Oscar-winning movie star who wrote one acclaimed memoir after her divorce; Una Troubridge was mostly the lover of Radclyffe Hall, and as they were both women in the twentieth century, not technically a wife. Unfortunately, the other common theme that they share is that their marriages are desperately unhappy, they spend a lot of time being cruel to each other, and often their children suffer. In summary, there’s a lot of bad behavior here, and a lot of pain, too: Neal and Dahl lose a daughter; Howard cannot fully recover from the abuse she suffered at the hands of her father. But in the end, it’s impossible – and stupid – to take sides; almost everyone in her book is damaged. Their mental health is poor, and they are ill equipped to do better. It is not a pretty picture of fame, and fortune doesn't fare much better.