His Lovely Wife

by: Elizabeth Dewberry

Published by: Harcourt Books

Reviewed by Michele Heather Pollock

Ellen Baxter happens upon the site of Princess Diana’s death the morning after the fatal crash. There, she pockets an unusual photo of Diana left by a stranger. On her way back to her hotel, Ellen begins to hear the deceased Diana’s voice in her head–and her life takes a turn. As she draws parallels between her own life and Diana’s, she begins to question herself. As Ellen looks for meaning in her relationship with her older husband, a Nobel laureate in physics, and in her own life as “his lovely wife,” she goes on a search for the man who took the photo of Diana. What follows is a surprising, affecting, cautionary tale of the role of beauty and celebrity in the lives of women.

Elizabeth Dewberry’s His Lovely Wife is a modern-day fairy tale set within the novel form. Through both flashbacks and telephone conversations, Dewberry touches on the complexities of mother-daughter relationships: Ellen and her mother, a former Miss Alabama, have a touch-and-go relationship much in need of forgiveness. Through Ellen’s surprising emotions around the death of Princess Diana, Dewberry raises questions about the strange attraction of the lives of celebrities. And through it all, Dewberry manages to paint a portrait of a real woman, struggling with guilt and desires and trying to find her own place in the world.

The book is alternately heartbreaking and funny, filled with a woman’s reflections on beauty and physics, on photography and marriage, on responsibility and desires. In the end, Dewberry raises more questions than she answers, which lends the book an authenticity missing from many chick lit or women’s novels.

Dewberry said in an interview: “…when there is something that is really compelling and I have more questions than answers, that tells me that maybe a novel’s there.” Well, in the end of His Lovely Wife, Ellen Baxter’s fate is uncertain, but we do know that she has faced some new truths. Somehow, though the story is quiet and the action mostly internal, His Lovely Wife is nearly impossible to put down.

Armchair Interviews says: When you can’t put a book down, that’s a sign of a good storyteller at work.