I can envision many henpecked husbands buying this novel just by considering the pleasure suggested by the title. But, like someone releasing a sulphurous colonic emission into a crowded elevator, hoping to never be identified as the source, this wife is secretive-and deadly. But the title is misleading- the wife of note is only selectively silent. Perhaps the author had sales potential in mind when deciding on the title-creative writing gurus always insist that the title should be the last decision made for almost any book.
This is the first and, unfortunately, the only novel by the late Toronto-based author, as she died shortly after it was published. The complicated story is based on the lives of seemingly ordinary people in modern Chicago, although almost all of them are deeply flawed. They are a varied lot, including a waitress in a sleazy restaurant/bar, a entrepreneurial home renovator given to bouts of depressiony with an enormous, indiscriminate libido, his equally lecherous widowed boyhood friend turned salesman with a very immature daughter, who is a social sciences university student, and a psychotherapist. Given the demographics of Chicago, it is perhaps an oversight, but a forgivable one, that there are no blacks and no hispanics even mentioned.
Some of the introspective self-analysis that some characters engage in borders on psychobabble, but there are also keen insights into basic human frailties. In one sense it is a classic love triangle romance, but one side of the triangle becomes a modern day Lady MacBeth with the benefit of training in Adlerian psychotherapy. The ending is far from predicable, with an ingenious twist and a touch of ambiguity. At about page 200, I guessed at a possible ending but was completely wrong.
Having spent a few days in Chicago every year for over twenty years, I have fond memories of several of the iconic landmarks that are featured, most notably the bar at the Drake Hotel, where I spent several evenings with great friends that I only saw once a year.
The writing is engaging and straightforward. For most of the book, the short chapters alternate between “Her” and “Him” narrated by a third person observer, until in Part 2, there no longer is a “Him”.
A very enjoyable light read.
The Passionate Reader 