Name: The Wives of Bath
ISBN: 9781862071377

Susan Swan

Mouse and Paulie, reluctant 14-year-old inmates of Bath Ladies College, are confronted by difficult questions. Why can't girls have muscles? Why don't boys cry? Gradually their secret life becomes a dangerous quest for the one small, vital thing that makes boys different from girls.

The Wives of Bath

With a new introduction by the author about the process of the novel becoming a film. Now a film – Lost and Delirious – based on the bestselling novel, directed by Lea Pool and starring Piper Perabo, Jessica Paréand Mischa Barton. This fall Susan Swan’s gothic tale of sexual longing and repression at a boarding school for proper young ladies comes to the big screen in a critically acclaimed production renamed Lost and Delirious. Renowned film critic Roger Ebert called it “one of the most carefully crafted, most professional films...at this year’s Sundance Film Festival...the characters are enormously interesting and likable [and] gorgeous.”

Megan Cooper

The main problem that I found with this book was that I couldn't find enough time to read it. I actually missed my stop while reading it on the bus and actually considered staying on the route until the bus turned around and came back the other way - that's how much I enjoyed this book. I had seen the movie, Lost and Delirious, that was based on this book some time ago and was not particularly overwhelmed by the movie. It was good, but it didn't really make much of an impression on me. I picked up the book on a whim a few months ago and was a bit ambivalent about reading it until I cracked open the first page and read Susan Swan's introduction where she speaks about the movie versus the book - she was pleased with the adaptation, despite the fact that it changed so many things that were found in the book. And the reasoning behind the changes in the movie adaptation make sense. The introduction actually made consider watching the movie again and see if my opinion would change. Reading the book made me definitely want to give the movie another shot. 

From the first few pages I was sucked right into the story - the narrator is Mouse (Mary) Bradford, a wonderfully engaging young girl who is being sent to a girl's boarding school (Bath College) outside of Toronto in the 60s. The book is definitely a coming of age story for Mouse, but it`s also a very interesting look at gender, identity and the roles/social constructs of the 60s. Mouse is intelligent, humourous and insightful - and is an outsider from the begining, based on her distant relationship to the head mistress, being two years younger than her classmates, and the hump she has as a result of polio. At the school, she meets several girls, including her roomates Tori and Paulie, and the teachers - and when you get down to it, they are all ousiders in their own way, some conforming more than others. I couldn`t help but sympathize with all the characters - both primary and secondary. 

There is a fair bit of humour in the book, with some underlying tragedy, but there`s even more to think about as you get deeper into both Mouse and Paulie`s lives. Throughout the book, Mouse and Paulie express their dislike for women - but it`s not the gender that they dislike, it`s the roles that women are relegated to and the absense of power, authority or respect that women have that they dislike. How they deal with their disatisfaction of being stuck as female in the 60s is vastly different. Mouse declares that she will ``live as myself and nobody else, for now and always``, whereas Paulie takes a more drastic course of action. 

ETA

I re-watched the movie. It still didn't leave much of an impression. If I hadn't known that the movie was based on the book, I never would have guessed. The screenplay was a bit too much of a departure for me. The book is better. Much better. Read the book.

The Wives of Bath

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