Dogs, Houses, Gardens, Food, and Other Addictions

Pauline Carey is an actor, playwright, and fiction writer. She is the
author of Magic and What’s in a Name?

If the reader has a passion for food or flowers, or a passing interest
in beastly dogs or the horrors of house renovations, this will prove an
intriguing read. If none of these enthusiasms apply, the reader will
have to make do with sometimes hilarious judgments on the rich and
famous at play.

At 18, as Gotlieb tells it, she married a man she barely knew and
certainly didn’t love, who landed her in many different houses as he
pursued his various occupations as a don at Oxford, a diplomat in Ottawa
and then at the United Nations in Geneva, the Canadian ambassador in
Washington during the Reagan years, and finally a businessman in
Toronto.

Her account of the gypsy life with Allan is lively and often very
funny. In Oxford, the newlyweds fell in love; she also ate and slept
and gained 40 pounds in one year. In Geneva, they enjoyed a second
honeymoon with two children in diapers while she honed her skills as a
cook, and they all explored French and fabulous country restaurants.
Back in Canada, she started her writing career as a food critic, but in
power-hungry Washington she lost her desire to cook and began a series
of articles for the Washington Post entitled “Wife of....”

Strangely, many of the laughs disappear when she reaches Toronto.
She’s replaced her passion for food with a full-fledged obsession with
her garden, and the last few chapters simmer down to a gardening manual
as she describes the making of a showcase space composed of “different
rooms, separated by brick walls, cedars and wooden fences.”

As for dogs, she kept buying them, although they all caused trouble,
because she could complain to the dog instead of her husband, and they
took her husband out for walks. The last words in this entertaining read
go to a dog.