The Constant Mistress

by Angela Lambert

Laura King, a single woman, childless, mid-40s, has just been told she has a year to live. She decides to hold a party, inviting the dozen men who have played a significant role in her past. Most are ex-lovers, some just good friends, but to all of them she makes the most unorthodox suggestion.

Genres: Fiction

351 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1994

About the author

Angela Maria Lambert was a British journalist and author. She is best known for her novels A Rather English Marriage and Kiss and Kin, the latter of which won the Romantic Novel of the Year Award.

Reviews

[Maja · Rating 5 out of 5]

Don't let the sex scenes lead you to believe that this is a cheap sex novel. It is far from it and, although some descriptions are very detailed, they are not the least bit tacky.

As cliche as it may sound, this is a book about love, life and death. Moreover this is a book about living with, and accepting a terminal illness, and about facing it on your own. Accepting and welcoming death.

Lambert used actual experience from a survivor of hepatitis C, otherwise I would have believed that she somehow experienced everything in this book and managed to transform it into a perfectly written novel.

[Tina Tamman · Rating 2 out of 5]

Potentially this is an important novel. We all die one way or another and this is a novel about the decline of an unmarried and childless woman in her forties who feels that she's too young to die. She, however, is a strong character and therefore doesn't just want to slowly fade away when told that she has a year or so to live. Hepatitis C has invaded her liver. Regardless, she invites her past lovers to dinner, they turn up (I think 11 of them), enjoy the food and drink, are dismayed at the news she tells them, and then she spends her last year with each of them in succession.
I liked this novel for its boldness to tackle a difficult subject but heartily disliked the author's focus on sex. Although sex is important in human relationships, in my view it doesn't dominate quite as much as the author would like us to believe. I felt this cheapened the power of the novel.

[tiger lily · Rating 1 out of 5]

This won't be a proper review; I only made it 58 pages in and couldn't stand any more of it.

This is one of those books where you read what it's about and it peaks your curiosity in a sort of "how on Earth are they going to tackle THAT?!" kind of way. Except it leaves you feeling stupid for ever thinking something so outlandish (and really just awful) could ever work at all.

To have been 58 pages in and to still have not reached a point where I felt any great deal of sympathy or interest (especially um, for someone who is dying of a terminal illness), is a warning sign to me that maybe I should open up another book because honestly how many more pages should it take to feel invested? For what it's about, it shouldn't be so hard to keep the interest of someone who is fascinated especially by death, sex, and terminal illnesses... HOW DID THIS BOOK MANAGE TO PISS ME OFF SO MUCH?!

Boring, successful, middle-class woman with a life which seemed all roses until she discovers that she doesn't have long to live, then does something completely unrealistic and batty, only for the consequences to be completely mundane, and yawn-inducing. It's literally like she's a boring, successful, middle-class woman, and she has a boring, successful, middle-class death. I can't believe I'm saying that, but really..

I was hoping that for a book of such a serious subject matter (considering this "serious subject matter" is likely where I went wrong) and yet such a strange but intriguing premise, this would penetrate way, way deeper, and that Laura would have a little more depth and soul to her, but no... No. No. Nope... It's just a load of rambling twaddle about how sensitive her breasts were when she were younger; bland memories of forming an attraction to a man who could dance really well; bland memories of being a foreign interpreter; how one of the men she loved wanted to grope her boobs again even though she's dying and he now has a partner; and how dear mummy is trying to get her to come to her lovely place in Miami to "get away from that dreadful English weather!" Ugh... What?

The part which made me really feel like giving up with this, was the conversation Laura had with one of her exes or ex-male-friends (dinner party guests) about politics and taxes, where we learn that Laura would not like to pay higher taxes..... Okay. But after having endured the page JUST before this, where she's brain-farting a paragraph of inner thought, in a kind of bemused wonder about how poor they are, and how they do all of these unthinkable things (like MEND CLOTHES instead of buying new ones! wow), to save money, instead of hiring cleaners and maids and whatnot, like Laura does, draws a direct line of attention to the fact that Laura is privileged, wealthy, hasn't struggled much, but no, she would not like to pay higher taxes which would help people in her position struggling with terminal illnesses... Well, how lovely.

This does make perfect sense though, being as the reason she set about this crazy "invite all of my exes to dinner, get them drunk, and then ask them all to look after me" thing, is because she didn't want to burden the people who she didn't care enough about BEFORE her diagnosis! Even her own family. Maybe I should go into this just acknowledging the fact that Laura is detestable, charmless and unlikable, and then maybe I'll be able to put up with her crap enough to just be curious about what happens to her after having conducted herself so badly and... strangely.

Yeah, okay, maybe if I gave this book more of a chance, I might even discover that Laura learns more from her life of success, and maybe she changes and becomes a nicer person, maybe she becomes humbled by her mortality and learns something from these men that she actually discarded a long time ago but now suddenly wants because she's dying, so now they're convenient for her, and to Hell with any damage this could do to their wives and children and all.... but I very much doubt that this book will follow that kind of direction. I even doubt that the rambles about her success even have a purpose other than to highlight "Who Laura Is", and don't go any deeper or further than that.


Edit: I think I may have taken this too seriously when it was intended to be... jokier? Or funny? Or something?

Either way: Awful. Really awful.

[Arja Salafranca · Rating 5 out of 5]

A wonderful read from a writer whom I’d never encountered before. Laura King is a liberated, single women who discovers, at the age of 44, that she is dying from liver disease. Rather than choosing treatment and a liver transplant she decides that, in this final year of her life, she will re-visit all the men she has known and had relationships with. She invites them all to a dinner party, asks if she can stay with each over the next year and the story follows her stay with all, some more successful than others, there are wives around now, and each encounter is also a memory, a recounting of each relationship. A fascinating, beguiling, memorable book. So skilfully told so memorable, so absolutely well done, a slick book that touched and reached right into me.

[Sue · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this book way back around the time it was first published and obviously enjoyed it because I kept it. I decided I should read it again to see if it was still good for me or if, as has happened with a couple of other books recently, my tastes have changed.

It’s a really enjoyable book. Very well written. Great story. The writing has stood the test of time. I still don’t want to pass it on. I will keep it and hope I find another Angela Lambert in my collection to reread. Good writing, good storytelling, it’s the eternal pleasure.

[Toz · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting though strange book and I found it hard to get behind the choices that the main character makes or even to really like the main character.