Title: The Wives
Author: Tarryn Fisher
Publisher: HQ
Publisher: HQ
Pages: 352
My GoodReads Rating: ⭐
The book is
written in the first person past tense PoV of one of the wives. She introduces
herself as Thursday, and the other two wives as Monday and Tuesday, women known
by the days on which their husband, Seth, visits them. We don’t realise until much
later that Thursday is actually her name.
Her husband visits
her on Thursday evening, and by Friday morning, he is gone. Gone either to work
or to one of his other wives, the one she knows as Tuesday and the youngest
one, who she refers to as Monday.
Her mother taught
her that cooking was the only good way to be a wife. And so Thursday became my mother: doting, yielding, spread-eagle emotionally and sexually. But
her best attempts cannot hold a husband who has spread himself thin among three
women.
At first, Thursday
is content to have her husband on Thursdays alone, content to feel no curiosity
about the other two women. Then one day, she finds in Seth’s pocket a doctor’s
bill in the name of Hannah Ellington with her address on the bill, and all of a
sudden Thursday can’t stop herself from wanting to learn more.
The knowledge that
Hannah is pregnant, while Thursday, who has had a painful miscarriage and can
never hope of conceiving again, is a painful one. Thursday can’t help but feel
insecure at being upstaged in Seth’s affections by Hannah who is younger,
prettier and most importantly, pregnant.
But the act of
finding out more becomes dangerous. When Thursday meets Hannah and finds
suspicious bruises on her body, she wonders if she is missing something. When Seth
learns that Thursday has been satisfying her curiosity, he isn’t happy at all.
I felt sorry for
Thursday. She has no close relationships she can count on. Her parents are
alienated from her. Best friend Anna seems happy to psychoanalyse her over the
phone. For the most part, Thursday is left to her own devices. She keeps
herself busy in her work, as a nurse, but the emotional deprivation is strong.
Thursday is
remarkably insightful about the psychology of women. That’s how women are,
right? Always wondering about each other – curiosity and spite curdling
together in little emotional puddles.
No one tries that
hard to keep their husband unless they’ve already lost him.
She knows just as well
about the dynamics between the sexes. Experience has taught me that you can drag
a man’s eyes if you move the right way.
There was so
much about her PoV that makes us warm to her. Her observations, for one. What
did people do before emojis? It seems like the only reasonable way to lighten a
loaded sentence.
And most importantly, her honesty which shines through her words.
The most telling
and ironical quote is this one: That’s what love does. It gives you a sense of
well-being – like bad things will evaporate.
I liked this book
right up to the end, when it lost me on account of its twist ending. Up to that
point, I liked it only because of Thursday, and so the ending came out like a
bolt from nowhere. It was totally unexpected and not in a good way.
The thing with a
twist is that the reader must feel that the signs were all there, how did I miss
them? I didn’t feel like that at all here. The setup sought to prove one point,
and then what happened was quite another. The twist left several questions
unanswered.
Most of the characters
were unlikeable. This includes Seth, the other two wives, Thursday’s parents.
The sister we never meet doesn't give us any cause to think of her. The only other character I liked was Lauren, the head
nurse at Thursday’s hospital who shows sympathy and true friendship to Thursday.
The most glaring
reason for my dislike of this book was the insensitive manner in which it
seemed to approach the issue of mental illness. This book dropped from an It-was-okay rating to a Did-not-like, thanks to the end.