A novel about a Toronto actress in the 1960s and '70s who evolves into a theatre director known for her innovative style at a pivotal time for Canadian theatre. In her private life, she enjoys sex, likes men but does not want to live with one; consequently, her deepest loves are for three married men. The plot of the novel turns on how she eventually makes friends of their wives and draws them around her in her work.

As an actor, Pauline Carey played the god in Toronto in Dionysus in 69 and in 1980 toured Canada as Charlotte Bronté in Graham Jackson's solo play, Charlotte. As a playwright, her children's variety show Bugs has run in two theatre festivals, a contemporary play, My Name is Emma, won an award in Wales in 2005 and in 2006 she was named a finalist in the BC National Playwriting Competition for her play about Mary Wollstonecraft and William Godwin, Reason Has Nothing To Do With It. Short fiction and memoir pieces have appeared in NeWest Review, Onion, Now, Hopscotch for Girls, Pottersfield Portfolio, Room, Descant and Wrestling with the Angel (Red Deer Press). My Other Women is her first published novel.

Pauline Carey's profile page

In the 1960s, Toronto is a city on the edge of a theatre-driven revolution. With boundary-breaking plays testing the limits of audience expectation, young actress Andrea Dermot steps into this burning new landscape determined to find a life for herself onstage. In her journey towards personal and artistic fulfillment, Andrea enjoys men and what they have to offer, but prefers to live life unattached, guided by her own principles of love and devotion. A driven drifter, she pursues acting with a dedicated passion, but finds herself melting into the arms of unavailable men. Her heated affairs with married men don't, for the most part, weigh too heavily on her conscience; but after the end of each affair, she finds herself bound in friendship to the wives of her lovers and through them experiences a complexity of love and devotion she did not expect.

My Other Women is an ode to every artist in pursuit of fulfillment. Thankfully, Carey's construction of Andrea is not the typical celebratory ode to a rebellious woman who tearsaway from the constraints of societal expectations to emerge bright and victorious. Carey moves beyond this chimera of feigned depth and creates a character so real it's as if Andrea were plucked off the streets of Toronto's bustling arts community, laid across the pages of this novel, and carved open for inspection. This tempered presentation of a realistic character makes her struggles relatable. Andrea is talented, but she is not a diamond- in-the-rough awaiting discovery. She aspires to some sort of greatness, but likemany artists she works at what she loves for a pittance while plundering through the dailymechanisms of a less fulfilling job that will keep her financially afloat. This refreshing look into the life of an "ordinary" artist is set alongside scenes of intense artistic devotion. Readers witness Andrea's studious acts of creation as she stitches something whole out of the remnants of women's lives.

Although the events of this novel are set against the backdrop of profound cultural change, with the details of setting playing an integral role in the development of plot and character, the heart of this story pulses on what is left unsaid. The silence left between lovers (why did you leave me?), between friends (do you know about your husband?), the silence that exists on stage (use your body, not words) and languishes in Andrea's mind (do you know what you want?) is an infuriating and exhilarating aspect of the narrative.The world of theatre that Carey has so masterfully depicted reverberates quietly within the reader; a necessary silence between the reader and text makes for a space that allows us to imagine ourselves as the artist, to look inward to see what one needs to be satisfied, or at least to move on.

This novel serves as an incredibly valuable study of the artist at work while pricking beneath the surface of deeply held convictions regarding love and marriage.

ForeWord Magazine, May 2011

'With free love, marriage seems foreign. My Other Women follows fiercely independent and marriage abstaining Andrea Dermot, an artist who finds her doses of love in the form of married men on the stage in Canadian theatre. She finds friends in her lovers' wives, and leaves her in an interesting position of friendship, sexuality, independence, and love. Thoughtful and riveting reading, My Other Women is a read that will be hard to put down.'

MidWest Book Review