OP: My Life as a Wife: Love, Liquor, and What to Do About the Other Women
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Timewell Press, London, 2008. Hardcover. Very Good Minus. Signed first printing.
There may be no better sell for this memoir by British food writer Elisabeth Luard (1941– ) than its subtitle: Love, Liquor and What to Do About the Other Women. But then there are her opening lines: “This is the story of my life as a wife. Or how to stay married for forty years without actually murdering your husband. A love story.”
To provide some context, Elisabeth Longmore married Nicholas Luard (1937–2004) at just 21. It was love at first sight, and how could it not be? The latter was a handsome, principled, sporty, funny intellectual who was adored by all who knew him. But he was also a lifetime alcoholic and philanderer. The book begins with his obituary.
Luard’s writing is vividly beautiful, acerbic, and heartbreaking. Food and cooking is always there in the background and, at times, reveals itself as a means of asserting control. “Food does what I tell it to do. Nothing else in my life has ever done that.”
Our copy is a signed first printing, Very Good Minus. The first quarter of the book block is lightly rippled due to liquid damage, though not showing any staining. Hardcover.
