Waiting for a Party

Synopsis

What is it like to be married for thirty years but experience your first orgasm only after being widowed in your sixties?

How does an older woman change once she discovers her sexuality?

Could she have prevented the death of her husband? Why did she wait for an hour before calling the ambulance once she heard the thud of his body hitting the floor?

Claire Meadows, 92, a retired piano teacher, reflects on her life, while waiting to be taken to a 102nd birthday party of a friend, a prolific writer of detective stories. She has baked a cake for him, as she has done for the last seventy years.

She looks back on her marriage to Bill as a happy time and remembers without bitterness her husband’s secret visits to women whose calling cards, complete with pictures of them in states of undress, were scattered in the bottom drawer of his desk.

As a young woman she nurtured two ambitions: to become a concert pianist and to have children. When the former became incompatible with her role of a supportive wife, she accepted the situation and looked forward to becoming a mother.

But month after month brought disappointment; her kind husband was sympathetic, always ready to offer a shoulder to cry on.

Years later, she discovered the reason why she was unable to fall pregnant. And it was nothing to do with her.

Released from the bonds of her marriage, and encouraged by her feisty friend Patricia, a single mother, with few inhibitions, Claire embarks on a series of sexual encounters. She even fulfils one of the dreams of her youth in a way she could never have imagined.

As she lies in bed, waiting to be taken to the party, Claire relives the details of her affairs with relish. She continues to harbour sexual fantasies and wonders whether there is someone who could still find her desirable.

Praise for this Book

‘An exquisite, elegiac novel of late female desire.’ —Simon Okotie

Reviews of this Book

The Literary Fiction You Should Be Reading ‘There’s a slight Mrs Dalloway-esque air to this slim novel, which spans the hours that pianist Claire spends waiting to attend the birthday party of her novelist friend, Martin … As her mind circles around her numerous lovers – and her ‘found family’ – she meditates on what makes for a life well-lived and re-evaluates her marriage: was it as happy as she is determined to believe? And was her husband’s death a stroke, or perhaps an accident that she had a hand in?’ —Stephanie Cross, Daily Mail

Praise for Previous Work

‘In the opening pages of Vesna Main’s short story collection we meet two women – both objects of the male gaze but under very different circumstances. The first story references EastEnders, the second the Salon des Refuses, challenging the reader’s moral perception and demonstrating the nuances of consent. Themes like these emerge throughout the otherwise disconnected 20 stories in the Croatian author’s collection. They are introduced with a quote by Alberto Manguel from his novel All Men Are Liars: “It is strange that no reader ever understood that my only subject is love.” The desire to be loved runs throughout Temptation, but there are no happily-everafters here.’ —Antonia Charlesworth, Big Issue in the North

‘Lush Library Recommends: Anna James’ Books for 2018 Another collection of short stories, this one from Croatian writer Main, these look at ideas of loneliness, passion and obsession and the sometimes gray areas between them. In these experimental stories of different lengths and styles, her characters include a prostitute turned murderer, a self-destructive book collection and a perfectionist dinner party hostess.’ —Anna James

‘Vesna Main’s novel is inventive, witty, “experimental” in style and structure, but none the less involving and powerful for that. It is written in purely dialogue form and makes a point of leaving its readers with their own share of imaginative work to do. The multiple narratives are ingeniously interwoven and the dialogue handled with a deftness of touch that keeps readers perpetually on their toes. Although she has learned some handy lessons from Nathalie Sarraute and other, mainly French practitioners of the “new novel” Vesna Main here shows herself a highly distinctive, adventurous, and formally accomplished writer whose work should find many admirers.’ —Chris Norris

‘Main’s stories are vivid, strange, thrillingly brief and filled with sex, violence and the banal horror of daily life. They are unusual tales filled with often unlikeable characters. Temptation is for you if you like witty, sharp dialogue, experimental modernist fiction and stories which speak to the darkest corner of ourselves.’ —Megan Kenny, Disclaimer Magazine

‘It is thought-provoking and insightful, and, while it could prove uncomfortable reading for anyone who is part of a middle-aged married couple, I think it is an important book and one that I can imagine prize judges responding to very positively as the year unfolds.’ —Scott Pack

‘The format might lead one to expect an ironic, fabular illustration of how unsophisticated readers get fiction wrong. But Main is more sophisticated than that. There are layers of fiction in Good Day?, each of them unstable.’ —Times Literary Supplement