The Other Wife

Jackie Thomas-Kennedy

$32.99

Paperback

Forthcoming
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English

Viking
17 July 2025

Modern & contemporary fiction (post c 1945); Fiction: special features

The Other Wife is a bold debut about race and class, love and nostalgia and learning to live with the life we have chosen

Susan 'Zuzu' Braeburn is almost forty. She has the life she's always dreamed of - a beautiful house, a child, a successful partner. But something between her and Agnes has been off for a long time, and she can't help but wonder 'what if'.

What if she had chosen to live with her father instead of her mother after their divorce? To pursue art over law? And, most importantly, to pursue her feelings for her male best friend from college, Cash, instead of marrying Agnes?

When an unexpected loss takes her back to her hometown, over a single wintery weekend, the questions in Zuzu's mind become too loud to ignore. She grapples with the choices she's made and the knowledge that she doesn't have infinite time to make changes in her life. The Other Wife speaks to unfulfilled desires and the euphoric nostalgia that's particular to the beginning of middle age; it is heartfelt and daring in its reckoning with the quest for joy.

By: Jackie Thomas-Kennedy
Imprint: Viking
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 235mm, Width: 154mm, Spine: 23mm
Weight: 370g
ISBN: 9780241726570
ISBN 10: 0241726573
Pages: 304
Publication Date: 17 July 2025
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Forthcoming

Jackie Thomas-Kennedy has been awarded a highly prestigious Stegner Fellowship and two MacDowell fellowships for her writing, as well as fellowships from the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, and Yaddo. She is the winner of the 2019 Stella Kupferberg Memorial Short Story Prize. Her work has been recorded for NPR's Selected Shorts, and her stories have appeared in American Short Fiction, One Story, and Electric Literature, amongst others.

Reviews for The Other Wife

Extraordinary. A story about belonging in liminal spaces, and longing for things seemingly just out of reach. A searing, beautiful book -- Kiley Reed, author of Such a Fun Age The Other Wife"" captures the dizzy angst of young romance so well… following Zuzu over decades as she navigates growing up is a heart-rending, funny and relatable journey -- Jessica Grose, author of Screaming on the Inside Tender, wise, and thoroughly compelling, The Other Wife teems with the complicated pleasures and desolations of longing. Jackie Thomas-Kennedy knows a great deal about the life-shaping strength of desire. -- R. O. Kwon, author of The Incendiaries