Books That Matter: Laura McGrath on THE WIFE by Meg Wolitzer

Welcome to Books That Matter. In this series, I’ll speak with writers I admire to learn about their lives as readers and deep dive into a book that matters to them. Laura B. McGrath is Assistant Professor of English at Temple University, National Endowment for the Humanities Fellow, and author of Middlemen: Literary Agents and the Making of American Fiction. Her writing has appeared in *The Atlantic, The Nation, The Los Angeles Review of Books,* and *Public Books.* She also writes the popular publishing substack, TextCrunch. In today’s episode, Laura joins me to talk about **Meg Wolitzer’s** *The Wife*. I absolutely loved reading this book and it is a novel that absolutely must be discussed so I was thrilled to get the chance to deep dive into it with Laura. We talked about what makes a good publishing novel and how this particular book illuminates gender disparities in the literary world, while saying something much broader about what it means to be a woman and a wife. Of course we also we dive into Laura’s book *Middlemen,* which is all about the unique role literary agents play in the contemporary American publishing landscape. This book is the very definition of a rich text. I found Laura’s discoveries fascinating and I think any reader of contemporary fiction will as well. While we do talk about the end of *The Wife*, we save that for the last few minutes of our conversation and give ample warning before we we into spoilers! **You can find** *Middlemen* on Bookshop.org **or wherever you get your books!** This is a peek behind the curtain of a very opaque industry and if you love books, I think you’ll find it extremely interesting. **Connect with Laura:** Website | Instagram | Substack | Middlemen on Bookshop This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit fictionmatters.substack.com/subscribe