How To Be a Good Wife
A Novel
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3.6 • 33 Ratings
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
How To Be a Good Wife by Emma Chapman is a haunting literary debut about a woman who begins having visions that make her question everything she knows
Marta and Hector have been married for a long time. Through the good and bad; through raising a son and sending him off to life after university. So long, in fact, that Marta finds it difficult to remember her life before Hector. He has always taken care of her, and she has always done everything she can to be a good wife—as advised by a dog-eared manual given to her by Hector's aloof mother on their wedding day.
But now, something is changing. Small things seem off. A flash of movement in the corner of her eye, elapsed moments that she can't recall. Visions of a blonde girl in the darkness that only Marta can see. Perhaps she is starting to remember—or perhaps her mind is playing tricks on her. As Marta's visions persist and her reality grows more disjointed, it's unclear if the danger lies in the world around her, or in Marta herself. The girl is growing more real every day, and she wants something.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In Chapman's chilling debut, it's immediately clear that Marta Bjornstad is uncomfortable in her empty nest, with her son Kylan living in the city and her husband Hector more distant than ever before. Cracks begin to appear in Marta's formerly comfortable life: she discovers cigarettes in her purse and enjoys smoking them, though she has never smoked before. She yearns to travel, although for the past 20 years her life has been circumscribed by the mountains on either side of the small valley in the unnamed Scandinavian country in which she and Hector live. She stops taking her medication and begins to question some of the things she'd previously taken for granted for instance, Hector's insistence that she take her medicine (he even placed the pills on her tongue). She also begins to see a girl in dirty pajamas, who seems to need her help. And her outright hostility to Kylan's new fianc e only widens the cracks, alienating the person she loves the most. As she examines more closely what's beneath her family's habits and some of her own memories, she becomes certain that she has uncovered a terrible dark truth that if she reveals it will tear their lives apart. Despite a far-fetched conclusion, Chapman excels at creating tension and suspense.
Customer Reviews
Gripping
It may have started a bit slow, but when Marta sees the blonde girl for the first time is becomes a roller coaster ride. I couldn't put it down, and stayed up late into the night to finish it. Excellent, excellent book.
Great Plot Watered Down...
The storyline actually could have been something if it wasn't watered down with flowery language that took up so much time nothing really happened...