The First Wives Club

by Olivia Goldsmith

Overview

Before Sex and the City...before The Starter Wife...there was The First Wives Club
The sharp-witted and sexy New York Times bestseller!

Elise, Brenda, and Annie have one thing in common: they were all first wives. Make that two things in common — they were the secret to success for each of their spouses, faithfully supporting them as they rose to the top. Okay, three things: they were each abandoned for younger, blonder, sleeker women, "trophy wives" for their exes to sport about town.

It may not be on the menu at New York's finer restaurants, but revenge is a dish best served cold — and while lunching at Le Cirque, the ladies decide the time for self-pity is over: now it's time to get even. How they conspire to give each man his due — in full view of New York society — makes The First Wives Club the "deliciously wicked" (San Francisco Chronicle) indulgence that, like vintage champagne, goes straight to your head...and captures your heart along the way!

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781416562832
Publisher:	Gallery Books
Publication date:	04/01/2008
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	576
Sales rank:	506,032
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.20(h) x 1.70(d)

About the Author

The late Olivia Goldsmith (1949-2004) authored fourteen novels, including Wish Upon a Star, Marrying Mom, Flavor of the Month, and her seminal international bestseller The First Wives Club. There are more than 10 million copies of her books in print.

Editorial Reviews

"Hilarious, smooth, and sexy." — Cosmopolitan

"Absolutely impossible to put down." — Newsday (NY)

"Totally believable.... Deeply satisfying." — The New York Times Book Review

From the Publisher

the beauty of "The First Wives Club" is that the upset, when it comes, is totally believable....Ms. Goldsmith's first novel, is politically correct: although all three women find lovers, the lovers aren't the key to their success, in fact they are not socially comme il faut. One is a Younger Man, one is a Hispanic government bureaucrat and one is a woman....Oh, sure, cliches fly and characters are overdrawn, but Olivia Goldsmith tells a credible and deeply satisfying tale. It should give pause to jerks everywhere. -- New York Times

Susan Lee

The author of First Wives Club spoofs Hollywood clebrities and entertainment industry glitz. (May)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Annie, Elise, and Brenda are all good wives who have helped their husbands achieve success. Now that their men are at the pinnacle, they find themselves dumped for younger, sleeker ``trophy wives.'' So they band together to form the ``First Wives Club'' for the purpose of seeing justice done. There are obvious problems with this first novel. For one thing, the husbands are the kind of guys you love to hate and the younger women are all immature and selfish. The first wives may have their problems (drinking, overeating, and so on) but they are warm, likable characters, unlike their rotten spouses. Despite all this, it's still easy to cheer when the men reap their just rewards, and the first wives find love, happiness, and success. Money, sex, drugs, and revenge make for a heady mixture sure to be popular in any general fiction collection. Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 11/1/91; Literary Guild alternate; movie rights to Paramount.-- Marilyn Jordan, Keiser Coll . Lib., Ft. Lauderdale, Fla.

Library Journal

"There ought to be some kind of retribution, some way to even the score....Let's make sure they pay a price." These are the words of a veritable Park Avenue Medea in Goldsmith's sharp, vitriolic, funny, and exceedingly commercial debut novel—all about what happens when three abandoned society wives get mad. The wives are a little slow to cut loose because, as one of them points out, "We are a generation of masochists." Besides, their divorces have laid them low. Indeed, good girl Annie Paradise still thinks she loves her soon-to-be ex, advertising-whiz Aaron, who gambled away their Down's syndrome daughter's trust fund in a bum stock deal and shacks up with—of all people—Annie's old sex- therapist. Meanwhile, her Greenwich Village pal, Elise Atchison, a faded but still beautiful movie star and fantastically wealthy heiress, puts up with the promiscuity of her "empty suit," Bill, for years until—to add insult to injury—he decides to walk with an anorexically thin, cocaine-snorting performance artist. And Brenda, the wise-cracking former wife of crass, appliance-peddling millionaire Morty the Madman, takes solace in cookies and pies. But then the girls get together for lunch at Le Cirque and determine to see to it that there's justice for first wives. Their goals? "Morty broke...Bill castrated, and Aaron abandoned"—most of which they accomplish with the help of Elise's dough, the Securities and Exchange Commission, and a US senator. Along the way, they find themselves new beaux, laughs, tears, and vastly improved lives. Poor Medea never had it so good, nor do most real, down-to- earth first wives. But this is fantasy, with warm, cuddly female characters andlarger-than-life, utterly villainous men. Moreover, the novel mainlines into a vein of pure bile—which can't help but produce heady effects on those millions of women who know exactly what Goldsmith's talking about. (Film rights sold to Paramount.)

Kirkus Reviews