RATING GUIDE:
5 – A keeper!
4 – Very good
3 – Passable
2 – I’d rather read
a telephone book
1 – An absolute bomb.
Read at your own risk!
0 – Nothing will compensate for what I lost reading this
book
Emily Giffin tries to dissect the anatomy of an affair
from the female point of view in her book, “Heart of the Matter”.
“Heart of the Matter” is the
story of two women --- Tessa, the wife of a handsome, kind-hearted and
successful surgeon named Nick, and Beverly, a self-made woman and a single
mother to a beautiful boy named Charlie.
Even though they both seem to lead enviable lives are actually secretly
unhappy and discontent. Tessa leads a
comfortable life, is married to the love of her life and yet can’t seem to
shake off the feeling that something is wrong with her life and her
marriage. Meanwhile, Beverly’s
successful career in law hasn’t shielded her from the difficulties of raising a
child alone, as well as her own desire to have a companion.
The women’s lives change forever
when Charlie becomes Nick’s patient.
Though Beverly tries to control her emotions, she finds herself falling
for Nick. Nick, even though he loves
his wife and family, feels alone in his own marriage. Soon, the two develop a friendship … which leads to an
affair. How will Tessa and Beverly deal
with this act of infidelity?
Unlike many books for women that
are fluffy tales about romance or hot sex or being a bitch to other women,
Emily Giffin’s book is a book that tackles a number of serious matters such as
(early) midlife crisis, emotional affairs and infidelity. If you want a distraction from your own life
problems, you might want to skip this book.
However, if you want to read a fairly realistic book that tackles many
of the issues that confront women and families today, then this is a good book
to consider.
The best part about this book is
that Giffin’s book neither condemns nor condones affairs and the people who get
involved in these types of relationships.
It is more of an analysis of how affairs evolve. Whether they like it or not, women will
identify with the two women in this book.
Married women readers, however, might view this book as a horror story,
for in this book, even a marriage that appears to be full of love, isn’t safe
from the prospect of infidelity.
Women generally condemn affairs
and women who get involved with married men.
This book, however, presents the Other Woman’s side with respect and
empathy. Although I’m sure many of us
want to condemn the Other Woman as a gold-digging slut, Emily Giffin’s book
points out something that many of us refuse to accept: that sometimes, oftentimes, the Other Woman
is really just an ordinary woman who happens to fall in love with a married
man.
It would have been interesting
had Giffin included Nick’s point of view in the story. In the book, we only get to know about Nick
from either Tessa or Beverly’s point of view.
I would have wanted to hear what Nick had to say about his infidelity.
While Giffin paints a very
objective picture of infidelity, she also makes a strong statement about
it: that in any affair, no one really
wins, and it’s the children who suffer the most.
RATING: 4
