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    Getting Rid of Matthew
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    Getting Rid of Matthew
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    Getting Rid of Matthew
    Audiobook10 hours

    Getting Rid of Matthew

    Written by Jane Fallon

    Narrated by Rosalyn Landor

    3.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    For once, a novel that isn't about the heroine getting the guy. It's about getting rid of the guy, and in the process, finding herself.

    Helen is nearly forty, and has, for far too long, had an affair with Matthew, a high-powered, much older, attractive, married man who was once, of course, her boss. After years of being disappointed by missed dates, out-of-the-way restaurants, broken promises, and hushed phone calls, at last Helen realizes it's time to dump Matthew and get on with her life.

    This, of course, is the exact moment when Matthew decides to leave his wife for her. He appears on her doorstep and proceeds to move in. Helen then discovers how much she can't bear him. But she can't just throw him out-after all, she's been begging him to do exactly this for years. The only thing to do, she decides, is to convince his wife, Sophie, to take him back.

    So after a "chance" meeting in the park, Helen befriends Sophie and hears all about her lying, cheating husband. But then, the unexpected happens-Helen really starts to like Sophie. And then there's the other small problem of Matthew's handsome, charming son...

    Jane Fallon turns the conventional love story on its head in this irresistibly delicious, ironic debut.


    From the Compact Disc edition.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin Random House Audio
    Release dateAug 14, 2007
    ISBN9781415940303
    Unavailable
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    Reviews for Getting Rid of Matthew

    3.5/5

    177 ratings14 reviews

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    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 5/5
      Rereading this yet again. Still so, so great. With this book, Jane Fallon earned a lifetime pass where I'll always read any book she ever writes. Such a clever twist on a sort of sitcommish plotline (the other woman befriends her lover's wife, and schemes to get rid of him, meanwhile falls in love with his son by accident) but the characters are all so realistically rendered it feels grounded, rather than just silly. So funny and heartfelt. Also great reading about a woman in her 30s, rather than the 20somethings in Sophie Kinsella's books.
    • 4/5
      Helen has an affair for 4 yrs with Matthew. Matthew finally leaves his wife and moves in with Helen. Helen becomes friends with his ex-wife. Then falls in love with his son. She finds she doesn't want Matthew anymore so she tries to get rid of them and play the ex wife and her boyfriend back together. Listened to on audio Rosalyn Landor - Great (London)
    • 4/5
      I read this because I heard that she is Ricky Gervaise's wife. Lovely comeuppance comedy - sometimes improbable but always amusing in a delightfully nasty way. Youngish woman finally gets her married lover to leave his wife just as she's... but I don't want to spoil it for you.
    • 4/5
      Surprisingly, this was a summer bestseller, in the book charts for months straight. It is a half-decent way to while away a couple of days, but nothing more – dull, forgettable and formulaic. Essentially it concerns one woman in a relationship with a married man, who decides she doesn’t love him just as he leaves his wife to move in with her. So begins a story of deceit and bitterness – it’s ‘How to Lose a Guy in Ten Days’ without the charm or wit.
    • 4/5
      I don't tend to read "chick lit" but this one was good fun. The author has done well to make both Helen and Sophie so likeable, and Helen's initial attraction to Matthew and susequent change-of-heart is entirely believable. The tension was well-done too; it was a good quick read. - Fiona
    • 5/5
      This book was extremely entertaining and I have to confess it made me laugh out loud.
    • 4/5
      Really enjoyed this book.Much more substantial that the usual chick lit fare, and NOT predicatible!! What a joy!When the mistress of 4 years finally get the husband, then she decides she doesn't want him .... what do you do?Looking forward to much more from Jane!
    • 3/5
      Toyed with a 4/5 for this but nothing moved it up to "I like it" for me. It's genuinely "okay". Helen is a very selfish woman, almost 40, who has been seeing a married man (Matthew) for the last 4 years. After lots of nagging he's finally left Sophie (after 14 years), who he only got together with because he cheated on his fist wife. Low and behold the selfish woman doesn't want him more. That's the plot, that's it. I thought there may be more, but there genuinely isn't. Helen is not only selfish but now becomes scary stalking lady when she actually befriends Sophie under a different name but it all becomes complicated when she actually kisses someone but she didn't know it was someone she shouldn't. It all comes out in the wash, as it does, and it then actually gets quite good - but that's with only about 70 pages to go. If you're going on holiday (which is what these summer reads are surely for) then this will last you a flight or a morning at the beach.
    • 3/5
      I liked the premise of this book: what would happen if the married man left his wife and moved in with his mistress. With it being told from the mistress's point of view, it looked as if it was going to be a slightly different story from your run-of-the-mill chick lit... but it wasn't.I felt the characters were rather vapid and thin. Helen wasn't particularly likeable, but came across as an inept woman who had little control over what was happening to her. The love link with Sonny was ridiculous - if Fallon wanted to do something with that, she could have made so much more of it. As it was, it was incredible and fell flat.However, the book was very readable, and some sympathy was built up for Matthew's wife. Not a book I'd read again. It was mooched on Bookmooch and has hopefully found a more appreciative reader in the States!
    • 4/5
      hard to stick with a book where the main character is fairly unlikableSeptember, 2007
    • 4/5
      Overall I enjoyed this book. There were times when the plot seemed a little far-fetched and I felt like Helen was acting more like a twenty-something than a soon to be forty something. In the end, though I enjoyed the book and was almost late to a lunch trying to finish.
    • 4/5
      Bridget Jones with a brain. I never could quite bring myself to like the "heroine", Helen. To be honest, she is a bit of a bitch, although she is self aware enough to know that she should try to be a better person. Although I thought the ending was a bit too tidy, I did enjoy it.
    • 4/5
      This was a quick fun read, the anti-Bridgette Jones' Diary. Helen and her friend Rachel have a list of the kinds of women they hate - women who sleep with married men, women who ditch their friends when they get married, women who get all ditzy when they plan a wedding, etc, etc. But Helen has been her boss's mistress for four years, seeing him every Monday, Wednesday and Thursday like clockwork. She was flattered that a man 20 years older would be attracted to her and she felt so sorry for him because his wife is just so horrible (according to him). So cliche, she hates his wife without ever seeing her.Matthew changes his and Helen's standard date night and then doesn't show because he attends a family event, and Helen pitches a fit. She gives him the silent treatment and fakes having a life. Matthew thinks she's being childish at first and then gets jealous. After not having any contact with Helen for weeks, he has a temper tantrum, leaves his wife and shows up on Helen's doorstep unannounced with his bags to move in. Helen doesn't know how to say she doesn't want him any more, so she lets him in and then proceeds to plot how to get him back with his wife.In Helen's quest to reunite the couple, she lies and manipulates everyone in her life. Matthew is extremely childish and a manipulator as well. I don't know what Helen or his wife Sophie saw in him. The only one who seemed genuine was Sophie. Even though the characters were not people I would want to be friends with in real life, the situations and some of the one liners were funny, and I enjoyed the book.
    • 3/5
      So ok, I’ve succumbed to chick-lit again, but this time I don’t feel bad about it. As a matter of fact, it was the negative reviews of this book that drove me to read it. Any book that is shouted down for its “excessive” use of the word fuck is something I can’t ignore. Coupled with an “unpopular” heroine, I succumbed. And it didn’t suck. Sure Helen is a twit, but she’s a reasonably ok twit. Not nearly as scatterbrained or vapid as Bridget Jones, but equally stupid in some areas, it was fun to watch Helen bumble through the first parts of the book and try to get her shit together and make amends in the latter. The fact that there was no wicked step mother-type to latch onto for a villain also helped. That particular cliché I don’t have time for. I also liked the fact that the author sharply pointed out that Matthew would never change his spots – he threw over Sophie for Helen in exactly the same way he threw over his first wife for Sophie. The fact that Sophie acknowledged this, felt bad about it and wasn’t all poor-poor-pitiful-me about it was refreshing as well. Once a cheater, always a cheater I say. The women who sign on as the latest mistress are so deluded as to be farcical. Helen found out that the grass is not always greener in the most graphic way. Matthew is no longer the romantic figure when he’s taking up space in her flat. During their tenure as a legit couple, Matthew frequently harangues Helen to grow up and she has to. Plunged into a relationship where she actually has a stake has opened her eyes to what she wants and what she has a chance of actually getting and she doesn’t like it. Instead of being as cruel to Matthew as he was to Sophie, she tries to repair the damage she has done and get the broken couple back together again.Her unintended success transcends those two people and completes her growing up process and the ending isn’t as sickly sweet as it could have been and for that I was grateful. I was expecting some tacked on, that-would-never-happen-in-a-million-years sort of ending which I thankfully didn’t get. Instead I got the emotional lift needed for getting all the way through the story.It is not perfect. There is a long-suffering friend – de rigueur for these types of books. Also there was the nasty backlash of family who despite Sophie’s early classification as usurper take her side in everything. And of course there was a possibly life-changing romance in the offing that seemed too good to be true. But those are necessary evils and expected.