How to Be a Good Wife
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- £3.99
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- £3.99
Publisher Description
How to Be a Good Wife is a haunting and unforgettable literary thriller about the 'perfect marriage', by Emma Chapman.
Marta has been married to Hector for longer than she can remember. She has always tried hard to be a good wife.
But now Hector has come home with a secret. And Marta is beginning to imagine – or revisit – a terrifying truth . . .
'The unnamed Scandinavian setting has all the familiar elements of contemporary northern lights noir . . . a ruthless examination of the many layers of marriage, and a woman's opaque role with it.’ – Guardian
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
I tried
This book starts off really slowly and then gets slower and more boring as you go along. Although I was bored almost from the off I persisted but I don't think I even got half way put the book down and have not picked it up since. It was boring with a big yawn!
How to be a good wife
There was a lot of description of the valleys and trees and skyline to read through. To be very honest I was disappointed in this book. I don't leave many books behind on holidays as I pass them on to friends but I will leave this one here in the Elysium Hotel in Cyprus and maybe someone will pick it up and enjoy reading it.