Book of the day: The Good Mistress by Anne Tiernan

Anne Tiernan: Sympathetic portrayal of women confronting the consequences of their choices. Photo / Supplied

Set entirely in the fictional Irish town of Ballyboyne, this New Zealand-published novel charts the journeys of three women in their late 40s: Erica, Juliet and Maeve. When Erica’s husband Rory – also Juliet’s secret lover – drops dead of a heart attack at 49, it catapults the women into
a reappraisal of their lives and futures.

Juliet has travelled back to her hometown from Auckland to farewell her long-distance amour, with Ruby, her 17-year-old daughter, in tow. Juliet’s been obsessed with Rory since their early teens, when they were part of a tight little friendship gang together with Maeve and Dan. But it was perfect, blonde Erica, attracted to Rory romantically rather than sexually, and not Juliet, he chose to marry.

In subsequent years, Juliet continued to hook up with Rory whenever the opportunity presented – although “sometimes it felt like shouting into a dark cave” trying to communicate with him. Sustained by her obsession, she has allowed herself to be defined by him, grateful for the unpredictable crumbs of his attention. Why would a man with a mistress make the hard choice to leave his wife when it’s so easy for him to have it all? Who is she now without him? Too late she realises it’s “better to have nothing of him than teasing fragments”.

The trio are introduced in the opening chapter at Rory’s Catholic funeral in Ballyboyne. Former schoolfriends Maeve and Juliet are reunited after a gap of many years. Maeve saw the troubled, self-hating Rory for what he was: “a deep dark beautiful sinkhole sucking all the love and light down into him”.

Juliet, reckless and self-sabotaging, continues to act out her craving to be desired, heedless of consequences. She’s a single parent, working a dead-end retail job “selling overpriced cushions to medicated housewives”, rather than pursuing the artistic career she’d dreamed of.

Erica, a tightly reined stay-at-home mother to teenage son Charlie, and the veteran of several miscarriages, now wonders if she had lost Rory even before his death.

Juliet, Maeve and Rory were also haunted by the tragic death of Dan at 17. The details of how he died are gradually revealed via flashbacks throughout the novel.

With 50th birthdays looming, all three women are struggling to see a way forward. Maeve shoulders most of the financial burden for a household that includes a mother with dementia, two teenage sons and an infuriating husband. She’s a hot mess of anger, exhaustion and resentment. Her 40s have delivered “more stress and money worries and work pressure and ungrateful teenagers and insomnia and hot flushes and no sex and sick parents and weird aches and pains everywhere that you google and are convinced it’s cancer”.

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She’s also currently blocked in writing a new novel in her series about “a beautiful, spiky journalist who solves violent femicides with a mix of intellectual deduction and astute observation, bedding, without shame, a whole bevvy of gorgeous, unsuitable men as she does”. Maeve begins to fantasise about a way out with a younger woman she met at a bar.

The dialogue is pitch-perfect, particularly in the interactions between Maeve and her hostile 16-year-old son.

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The author’s mordant Irish wit and humour energise the writing. More solemn issues such as Maeve’s mother’s dementia and Juliet’s mother’s terminal cancer, which resonate in the backdrop of the novel, are well handled.

Its rather bland cover design aside, The Good Mistress, which follows Tiernan’s 2023 debut The Last Days of Joy, is a well-observed and sympathetic portrayal of perimenopausal women grappling with the challenges of midlife and confronting the consequences of their choices. Maeve and Juliet in particular jump off the page, pulsing with vivid life.

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