{"id":3986,"date":"2013-03-22T10:41:28","date_gmt":"2013-03-22T10:41:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/?p=3986"},"modified":"2013-03-23T11:42:05","modified_gmt":"2013-03-23T11:42:05","slug":"vow-by-wendy-plump","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/?p=3986","title":{"rendered":"Vow by Wendy Plump"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>A Memoir of Marriage (and Other Affairs)<\/strong><\/p>\n

Published by Bloomsbury 14 March 2013<\/strong><\/p>\n

272pp, paperback, \u00a312.99<\/strong><\/p>\n

Reviewed by Caroline Sanderson<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u2018Infidelity is firmly attached to the sin and damnation side of the table of elements, and no-one wants to go over there for a closer look.\u2019 Well, I\u2019ve been taking a very close look at infidelity recently, and lest my husband reads this and jumps to conclusions, it\u2019s because this spring sees the publication of several books which subject the squeamish matter of extra-marital affairs to the kind of sober scrutiny, all too rare amid gleeful daily tabloid expos\u00e9s of celebrities and politicians caught in<\/em> flagrante<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Lucy Dent\u2019s Turned On<\/em> (Doubleday, March 2013) is a profoundly discomfiting memoir of how one restless woman\u2019s chatroom flirtations turned into an addiction to virtual sex, and then marriage-wrecking obsession. Dent tips out a whole trunk of dirty linen, as she lays bare marital disharmony, loneliness and sexual discontent in a somewhat tortuous read, from which it\u2019s nevertheless very hard to look away.<\/p>\n

In Our Cheating Hearts: Love & Loyalty, Lust & Lies<\/em> (Virago, May 2013), Kate Figes couples real-life testimonies from those who have \u2018cheated\u2019 and those who have been cheated on, with extensive research and trenchant analysis, to examine why people have affairs, and what being \u2018faithful\u2019 means. It\u2019s a very thought-provoking book, which questions why absolute fidelity in sexual love is now regarded as the primary symbol of commitment, regardless of whether or not it is realistic for most of us.<\/p>\n

But for a raw, 360\u25e6 anatomy of infidelity, with all its domestic-splintering consequences on both adults and children, Vow<\/em> is the book to read.\u00a0 In 2005, Wendy Plump, a US journalist, discovered that her husband \u2013 to whom she had been serially unfaithful herself – had not only had an affair but established a second family living only a mile away. In this ruthlessly self-reflective memoir, Plump dwells on the ordeal of Finding Out, the ebb and flow of passion, lies and alibis, as she attempts to deconstruct the allure of illicit attraction. She offers few antidotes to its pull, because \u2013 as she herself admits – she has found them hard to come by.<\/p>\n

With three in her marriage early on, as she succumbed to her first affair, Plump felt paradoxically isolated. \u2018There was no trusted ally to go to and ask: \u201cWhat the hell is this feeling, and why do I have it?\u201d \u2019(the very question which prompted Figes to write her book). She quickly realized that there is a high price to be paid for infidelity. \u2018Finding out about an affair will blow you into a state that is something like post-traumatic stress. Committing one will be a lower frequency of the same, half-deranged state of unease.\u2019 But does this stop her? Of course it doesn\u2019t. In the course of her marriage, she has affairs with four different men.<\/p>\n

Plump writes very well of what was essentially her addiction to The Other, and \u2018the drug and energy of passion, of new intimacy\u2026You do it all on the sly, and you steal from your own cupboards to cover the cost.\u2019 And it all seems worth it at the time because adultery can be \u2018transformational\u2019, allowing you to experience life \u2018at full tilt\u2019 once again. Feeling unsympathetic so far? Understandable. Plump\u2019s husband was no wife-beater.\u00a0 In fact her marriage was far from terrible, just one with a \u2018dispiriting trajectory\u2019, for which nothing had prepared her. Before she knew it, the relationship was \u2018sifting out\u2019 from under her, like \u2018quicksand\u2019. Cast the first stone if you wish.<\/p>\n

Lionel Shriver gave Vow <\/em>a right pelting in a recent Guardian<\/em> review, and not just for moral reasons. \u2018Plump suffers from a far greater failing than marital turpitude: she can\u2019t write,\u2019 she wrote, taking Plump to task for her \u2018self-help clich\u00e9s\u2019. Well actually, this whole sad story, and many others besides are the result of one whopping great clich\u00e9: the fact that we expect marriage to be \u2018this unbreakable, perfect vessel\u2019, as Kate Figes puts it. And Plump has a lot of insights to offer into the irreparable breakages that inevitably result. \u2018Affairs,\u2019 she writes, \u2018never end well.\u2019 No marks for stating the bleeding obvious. But plenty for realizing that this is a truism that needs exploration. Especially given the extraordinary dearth of any practical guides to marriage trauma, which leaves us to \u2018wander around in the marital labyrinth and mark out the best path we can.\u2019<\/p>\n

Plump prefaces Vow<\/em> with a short epigraph from W.H. Auden: \u201cHunger allows no choice\u2026\u201d Whatever her motivation for writing this book, I admire her for being honest enough not only to confess her own hunger but to attempt to figure out why she wasn\u2019t feeling fed.\u00a0 After all, there, but for prolonged eye contact with a nutritious-seeming Other, go a hell of a lot of us.<\/p>\n

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Reviewed by Caroline Sanderson<\/p>\n

Plump writes very well of what was essentially her addiction to The Other, and \u2018the drug and energy of passion, of new intimacy\u2026You do it all on the sly, and you steal from your own cupboards to cover the cost.\u2019 And it all seems worth it at the time because adultery can be \u2018transformational\u2019, allowing you to experience life \u2018at full tilt\u2019 once again. Feeling unsympathetic so far? […] in Reviews<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3986","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-new-fiction-and-non-fiction","category-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3986","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3986"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3986\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4026,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3986\/revisions\/4026"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3986"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3986"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3986"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}