June Flores had been a nurse at St. Bartholomew’s Hospital. She had manner as sturdy as a cast-iron pan—efficient, blunt, necessary. There were whispers that she and a man of Roland’s stature existed in two distinct orbits: the hospital’s night shifts, the country club’s brunches. When Roland’s will was refiled in 1998, it cut certain trusts in ways that raised eyebrows. An elderly neighbor, who remembered his first wife and the funerals that followed, said June was the sort of woman who “liked things in order.” When Mara visited the nursing staff at St. Bart’s, they remembered June as loyal to the profession and private in equal measure. “She didn’t talk about him much,” said a night nurse named Pauline. “But when she did, you could tell there were hard things behind it.”
While often categorized under erotic drama, The Second Wife is also a sharp social commentary. It looks at the role of women in post-war Italy, the weight of grief, and the struggle of the youth to find their identity in a country trying to rebuild itself. It avoids the clichés of its genre by grounding its more provocative scenes in genuine character development. index of the second wife 1998
June Flores had been a nurse at St. Bartholomew’s Hospital. She had manner as sturdy as a cast-iron pan—efficient, blunt, necessary. There were whispers that she and a man of Roland’s stature existed in two distinct orbits: the hospital’s night shifts, the country club’s brunches. When Roland’s will was refiled in 1998, it cut certain trusts in ways that raised eyebrows. An elderly neighbor, who remembered his first wife and the funerals that followed, said June was the sort of woman who “liked things in order.” When Mara visited the nursing staff at St. Bart’s, they remembered June as loyal to the profession and private in equal measure. “She didn’t talk about him much,” said a night nurse named Pauline. “But when she did, you could tell there were hard things behind it.”
While often categorized under erotic drama, The Second Wife is also a sharp social commentary. It looks at the role of women in post-war Italy, the weight of grief, and the struggle of the youth to find their identity in a country trying to rebuild itself. It avoids the clichés of its genre by grounding its more provocative scenes in genuine character development.