Book Review: "Memoirs of a Widowed Mistress" by Megan van Eyck

Title: Memoirs of a Widowed Mistress

Author: Megan van Eyck

Publisher: CreateSpace

ISBN, PUB Date: 978-1456454371, January 14, 2011

Reviewed by: Irene Yeates for Author Exposure

Memoirs of a Widowed Mistress provocatively and impressively mesmerizes the reader from start to finish. Without question, it is a powerful book that explores how life experiences, when left unexplored, may motivate a married woman to plunge into an extended affair with a married man she innocently encounters on a fateful flight home. Megan and Carlos were instantaneously attracted to each other, but neither personally felt that this passing connection would amount to anything more than an abbreviated exchange of enjoyable banter.

With unabashed honesty, Megan unflinchingly captures the various nuances of desire as she explicitly details her sensuous sexual escapades with Carlos. Curiously, their titillating clandestine affair evolves beyond the physical realm as a genuine love surprisingly encroaches upon their lives.

As a discontented wife and a devoted mother, Megan seriously analyzes not only the vast contrasts between Carlos’s and her husband’s love, but also her past dysfunctional relationships. Her inner journey propels her to painful memories of a tumultuous childhood, lacking in both unconditional love and prolonged stability. Amidst such emotional turmoil, Megan accidentally discovers that she may suffer from bipolar disorder, and the many jagged pieces of her puzzling life begin to make sense.

“…Every rollercoaster up and down in my life had been motivated, caused, by one thing: love, or rather, the reckless pursuit of it. Love was my illness. I had thought love was my cure…” (Page 164)

When Carlos initially is diagnosed with amyloidosis, Megan is his relentless advocate, researching the best medical facilities and most knowledgeable physicians known to treat this atypical disease. Much to her infuriating anguish, Carlos’s wife is inattentive to her husband’s need. Although devoted to Carlos, Megan, being an unwelcome mistress, cannot dispatch her abiding love to her dying lover.

Passionate in her piercingly frank delivery, Megan van Eyck unerringly maintains an impressive objectivity that often belies the dynamic intensity of her infinite love for an empathetic man some might call ordinary. Together they forged an indestructible bond which weathered the exploration and release of personal demons with compassion, sensitivity, and acceptance. Despite the numerous obstacles they faced, Megan and Carlos’s immeasurable love survived.

Forgiveness is a virtue too casually dismissed in spousal infidelity, but Megan’s husband apparently is the rare man who possesses it. I do not dismiss the fact that their affair inflicted pain upon their spouses. Yet, I do not fail to remember that in addition to strengths, we all have flaws. Megan’s flowing memoir is a captivatingly enticing read. Her notable arrangement of chapters denotes a vivid clarity of events. Not a book for the morally faint of heart, but definitely one that is extremely memorable.

“…Carlos’s gift had been the twofold benefaction of the things I had sought my whole life, things I had been unable to give myself: forgiveness of my mother and self-acceptance. Happiness would be my inheritance. He would be with me always, just as he had promised…” (Page 290)