Book Club: The World's Wife

Blurb: That saying? Behind every famous man . . . ? From Mrs Midas to Queen Kong, from Elvis’s twin sister to Pygmalion’s bride, they’re all here, in Carol Ann Duffy’s inspired and inspirational collection, The World’s Wife. Witty and thought-provoking, this is a tongue-in-cheek, no-holds-barred look at the real movers and shakers across history, myth and legend. If you have ever wondered, for example, how exactly Darwin came up with his theory of evolution, or what, precisely, Frau Freud thought about her husband – then this is the book for you, as the wives of the great, the good, the not so good, and the legendary are given a voice in Carol Ann Duffy’s sparkling and inventive collection.

Last night the book club celebrated its first year at Inamo on Wardour Street. If you've already been hopefully you can share my excitement about the TABLE situation. The lit up and responded to TOUCH so you can order via your table!! Honestly had our group of supposed adult women completely mesmerised... you could play games, watch footage of the kitchen at work, select your dinner so that an image of the exact dish was projected onto your expecting plate... amazing. seriously. Anyway, slightly hyperventilating, so enough of the table... the book:

I don't think I need to show you a photograph of our faces when it was announced that the next book club book would be... poetry. Having spent three years avoiding it at university, I naively thought I'd become a bit of a pro. It's not that I don't like poetry itself, it's the kind of analysis that comes with it. I really don't care how many times the colour green is mentioned or how the commas in the middle of a sentence change the entire meaning, I JUST WANT IT TO RHYME OK?

Ok, so I think we've gathered that I'm not a sophisticated lover of poetry but the few times I have enjoyed reading it have been when I haven't had any pressure to enjoy, to understand or to write a 3,000 word essay on the subject so the book club seemed probably the best forum.

From previous brushes with Carol Ann Duffy, I've not been a massive fan. I kind of have an irrational dislike of people who appear to be deliberately shocking. That said, I was attracted to the idea for this collection - giving voices to the women on the sidelines so to speak. For instance, I enjoyed reading Margaret Atwood's Penelopeiad, which she wrote as part of the Canongate Myths series that I reviewed earlier this year, where she took on the voice of Penelope rather than her husband Odysseus.

The best thing about these poems was the humour. The thought of Mrs. Aesop being bored out of her mind by her husband's constant moral wittering and the satisfying fact that Mrs. Faust inherits all of his possessions made me laugh out loud and demand my mum read them while she ate her breakfast... sorry Mum.

The poems also appealed to my mild antiquarian sensibilities. Not only did I learn about new historical and literary figures that I hadn't known before, but I was also reminded of other characters from books and plays and stories that I'd come across years ago and got that satisfying feeling when you are reminded of something you already knew.

The problem I had is not that the poems were bad or that there weren't some I enjoyed but that they are just so hard to get into. With a novel, you really invest your time and energy. It takes up a chunk of your life. I suspect my reading the poems over a couple of hours over a couple of days probably wasn't ideal. I should have dipped in and out for months perhaps? I'm not sure, but all in all I think it was well done and a good laugh but not really my kind of thing.

All things considered it received a 4.5/10 from book club and a 5/10 from me.