July 2008: Wife in the North

The Blog of the Month for July is Wife in the North, Judith O'Reilly's funny and moving treatment of displacement angst. The blog has made its author one of the publishing sensations of recent years. Just two months after O'Reilly started her blog at the end of 2006 Penguin came knocking with a lucrative publishing contract.

Wife in the North could have been a complete failure; the worst kind of metropolitan whinging. That it isn't is a testament to the writer's ability. O'Reilly's story of how her husband talked her into giving up her career in journalism and moving from London to Northumberland to bring up their young children in a less stressful environment generates immediate empathy. Giving up the comfort zone of liberal cosmopolitanism for wellies, farms and the company of those who believe the Four Horseman of the Apocalypse are on their way would try the most saintly among us. It is very easy to identify with O'Reilly: we all move, we all compromise, we all experience loneliness. We each wonder if we have found our place.

If the comments on the blog are anything to go by, Wife in the North seems to have struck a real chord with readers. That is no surprise. This is the kind of writing you go to because you want someone to express your own frustrations, doubts and confusions; the kind of writing we all need, regardless of how we feel about eschatological equestrians or sheep.