Wife of...: An Irreverent Account of Life in Washington

Joan McGrath is a Toronto Board of Education library consultant.

Sondra Gotlieb, “Wife of” Canada’s ambassador to the United States, has emerged from the obscurity more usual to “wives of” into prominence of her own making. In her newspaper column “Dear Beverly,” consisting of letters home to a fictional friend, the “wife of’ Mr. Ambassador reveals the real life of an embassy: the jostlings for place, the power games, the in-list and the out-list. Diplomats, their wives, and hangers-on can be pretty funny, especially when they least intend to be. It must add a dimension of terror to the Washington party circuit to realize that a rapier wit is loose among the ultra-civilized crowd, cleverly disguised as a mere denizen of a country that is “just not chic.” Gotlieb is funny, perceptive, self-mocking, and a rousing success in lampoon land. This collection of her “Dear Beverly” columns is a mini-course in jet-set diplomacy and a chuckle a minute.