Part of the series: My Favourite Books of 2025
At a Glance
| Author | Vesna Main 🇭🇷 (Croatian-British) |
|---|---|
| Published | 2025 |
| Publisher | Salt Publishing |
| Genre | Literary Fiction, Contemporary |
| Themes | Ageing, desire, autonomy, memory, unreliable narration, marriage |
| GFP Rating | Honourable Mention — Best Books of 2025 |
Scott’s Take
At 92, Claire is waiting to attend Martin’s 102nd birthday party. As she waits for her son and his partner to take her, she begins to reminisce — about her marriage, about the life she lived after it, about the man who never stopped loving her.
Her husband was twenty years her senior. Did she murder him? That question is introduced early and barely resolved — not because Main is being coy, but because Claire herself may not be sure. This is an unreliable narrator by design, a woman whose memories don’t always agree with themselves. You’re never quite certain when she’s telling the truth and when imagination and wish have blurred the edges.
I’m not generally a fan of sex in novels for the sake of it. What I love is sex as emotional journey — sex as connection, as longing, as discovery of self. Claire’s sexual awakening after widowhood is exactly that. The scenes escalate from fairly tame to considerably extreme, and they are far from what you’d expect of a novel centred on a 92-year-old protagonist. If explicit content isn’t for you, this may not be your book. But if you can engage with it, those scenes aren’t gratuitous — they’re the whole point. Being desired is what Claire has always needed. The sex scenes are how she finds herself.
Free from her marriage, her confidence grows in parallel with her sexuality. In many ways this is a coming-of-age novel — tracking the journey from a young woman who seems almost scared by being alive to someone who knows exactly what she wants and why. Part of that is simply ageing. But a lot of it is the leaving of a marriage: when so much of your life exists alongside somebody else, how do you separate what is you from what is you collectively?
When I look at the elements of a novel, there’s one that stands out here above all others: character. Claire is such an easy person to like. She has simple desires that exist somewhere between basic human need and hedonism — she wants to be loved, she wants to be desired. The way Main renders her confusion and occasional self-contradiction never makes her less sympathetic. It makes her more real.
Her lifelong friendship with Martin carries a note of quiet tragedy. His unrequited love seems almost practical to him — something he’s decided he deserves, something he keeps close. Whether Claire is using that love or simply refusing to acknowledge it is another of the novel’s unresolvable questions. I tend to read it straightforwardly: Claire values his friendship and hopes the feelings will fade. But the beauty of an unreliable narrator is that you can hold multiple readings simultaneously.
The arc of the book is ultimately about moving from a controlled life to a self-controlled one. From not knowing what happiness looks like, to a life of contentment, self-knowledge, and simple pleasures. Like cake. And bondage.
Watch the Full Review
Scott covered Waiting for a Party as part of his My Favourite Books of 2025 video. Watch it here:
▶ My Favourite Books of 2025 — Gunpowder, Fiction & Plot
(timestamps in the description)
Get the Book
Support independent bookshops when you buy:
- 🇺🇸🇬🇧 Buy via Bookshop.org — supports indie bookshops worldwide
- 🇦🇺 Buy via Booktopia — Australian readers
Affiliate links — if you buy through these links, GFP earns a small commission at no extra cost to you. It keeps the channel going.
If You Liked This, Try These
- A Family Matter — Claire Lynch — identity, sexuality, and the long fight to be who you are
- The Names — Florence Knapp — three worlds, three women, and how choices ripple through a life