Literary Wives Book Club (Sept 2025): Novel About My Wife by Emily Perkins

Literary Wives is an on-line book group that examines the meaning and role of wife in different books. Every other month, we post and discuss a book with this question in mind: What does this book say about wives or about the experience of being a wife? 

Don’t forget to check out the other members of Literary Wives to see what they have to say about the book!

Other participants:

• Kate of booksaremyfavouriteandbest
• Naomi of Consumed by Ink
• Rebecca of Bookish Beck
• Kay of What Me Read

Novel About My Wife by Emily Perkins

Last book club we reviewed The Constant Wife by W Somerset Maugham (read my review here). When I finished The Constant Wife I appreciated its take on marriage and the power dynamics within. In contrast, Novel About My Wife fell a little flat for me. 

The central wife in Novel About My Wife is Ann. But in truth, the story is told entirely from Tom’s point of view (her husband) and feels like it speaks more about him than her. The title promises a novel about a wife, but what we really get is a husband narrating a sotry about his wife to the reader, ostensibly to keep her memory her alive but he may have other motives. Tom tells us that Ann is an Australia he met while she was living in London. He doesn't know much about her past or even why she is living in London. But he falls in love and marries her. They buy a house and when the story begins they are expecting their first child. 

At the beginning of the narrative, Ann is caught in an underground train derailment which undoutedly impacts her mental health. She descends into anxiety, believing that she is being followed by a stalker and sometimes obsessively cleaning their home. It eventually seems likely that her issues began before the train accident, but it is never certain. We see her only through Tom’s eyes and his interpretation of her behaviour. Can we even be certain that he is being honest with us?  ,  The novel never gives her a voice and we can only speculate and infer from what Tim recounts. There is a traumatic event hinted at in her past, that potentially is a defining even in her life that may or may not being related to the decline in her mental health. Is the stalker a delusion created by her mental health struggles or are the mental health struggles the delusion and the stalker real and somehow connected to her past? We know that Ann passes away (not a spoiler) and it's implied, butonly implied, that she died by suicide. The traumatic event that defines her is never explained. 

In short - I did not enjoy this book. 

To delve into this more deeply - I found the ambiguity frustrating. I wanted to understand what was going on with Ann. I wanted to know what had happened to her in the past that cast such a shadow. I wanted to know how she died and whether there might have been anything suspicious about it. 

Perhaps I could have exercised my little grey cells and drawn my own conclusions, but I never got that spark. The gaps felt empty and the book didn’t inspire me to search for answers, only frustrated that I didn't have any. Is the fact that the story is narrated by a husband about his wife's death and yet he has called it a "novel" some clue to my confusion? If anyone else who has read this has their own theories, please let me know. 

So what does this novel say about wives?

Honestly, for a novel called Novel About My Wife, I think tha tthis story says something more about Tom, the husband. If I had to say something, I was would say that the novel suggests that a wife can still be unknown to the person thought to love them more than most others. Ann is only defined by Tom's observations and projections. Tom himself admits to not knowing much about her past, but he also has little curiosity, even though the very fact of her being less than forth coming suggests something important and hidden. He takes her at face value, but is also dismissive of her. He might say that he loves her, but does he know her? Can you love someone that you don't know?

In the end, I'm not really sure what it says about the experience of being a wife and I have no love of the story. It felt more like an ambiguous retelling (potentially even a confession, but of what I'm not sure) of events from a husband who never really cared to understand his wife. Maybe there's something there - that people see you as a wife or partner, but rarely as yourself without that context. 

If your idea of a satisfying read involves clarity, emotion and a satisfying plot then this book is not for you. 

Review: 100 Years of Betty by Debra Oswald

100 Years of Betty isn’t high-brow literary fiction and it doesn’t need to be. It’s warm, engaging, and I really enjoyed it. From the first chapter I connected with Betty, not because I’ve lived her life or even experiences 1/3 of what she has, but because Debra Oswald writes her with such humanity that you feel you could bump into her at the shops and strike up a chat.

Betty’s life begins in wartime London, a childhood shaped by the chaos and fear of the Blitz and the slow disintegration of her family under the strain of war and poverty. As a young woman she migrates to Australia in search of something more and begins (bravely in my mind) begins to build a new life in an unfamiliar country. Across the decades we see her navigate love and loss through multiple marriages, raise her children, and weather the quiet triumphs and disappointments that come with time. Betty's life is one of resilience and reinvention. 

One of the things Oswald does beautifully is show the role of chance in our lives. I once heard (and I wish I could remember where) that life is essentially a set of experiences that we tell ourselves stories about, so we can understand and ourselves better. It's an idea that's always struck me and I keep in mind when I am experiencing something challenging or stressful. That idea threads through Betty’s life. She makes choices but she’s also shaped by accidents, encounters, and the circumstances she finds herself in. Looking back, she pieces these moments together into her own narrative, and we see her come to understand who she is.

Reading it felt a little like a time travel novel except we move through time in the right direction. We watch Betty live through decades of change, each new era bringing shifts in social expectations, opportunities, and challenges. I felt joy and heartbreak watching her grow into her true self across all those years, especially as the world around her changes. We particularly see this shift almost immediately after her children are grown and she travels for the first time, moving to another content, to form connections and create a new family for herself, for a time. This moment felt to me like the most jarring or abrupt development in her character. I understand the change is big and abrupt because of the point in her life where she is free, without the responsibility of caring for her children, to finally put herself and her interests first.

One of the storylines that particularly resonated with me was about forced adoption. In a previous role, I worked in a not-for-profit organisation that supported people separated through forced adoption, and the emotions in this part of the book rang true. Oswald captures the pain, the complexity, and the lifelong impact without turning it into melodrama.

At its heart, this is also a story about women’s liberation. It shows how women have seen ourselves over time, how society has seen us over time, and how we have come to expect more from our lives. Through Betty, we see those changes unfold in small, everyday ways. Her confidence shifts, she becomes self-reliant and she knows she deserves and then expects respect.

And who doesn't doesn't love an elderly lady willing to experiment with hallucinogens. 

100 Years of Betty comes highly recommended by me.

Review: The Good People by Hannah Kent

Hannah Kent is one of my favourite authors. I’ve read all of her novels and her memoir. I love the way her writing seems to inhabit a time and place so completely that you can feel as though you are there. When you read her books you can see the world she describes, feel the damp air in your lungs, and experience the feelings and thoughts of the characters, right down to their bones. I saw her speak recently at the Sydney Writers’ Festival and she was just as lyrical and insightful in person as she is on the page.

But The Good People was, surprisingly, my least favourite of her books.

Set in rural Ireland in the 1820s, the story follows Nora, Mary, and Nance, whose lives become entangled through the care of a Nora's sickly young grandson, Micheal after Nora's husband unexpectedly passes away. Nora comes to believe that the “good people” (fairies) might be to blame for his condition, and the women take increasingly desperate steps to help him. 

Kent’s writing is, as always, richly atmospheric. She describes peat smoke curling from the hearth, mist hanging over green valleys, the smell and feeling of the wet and damp earth, and the rhythms of rural life in a way that feel so authentic that you can almost imagine that you are living them yourself. 

The book has a very slow pace which fits this setting. We experience the pace of a rural village in the Irish past and observe the seasonal change and the unchanging superstitious belieds of the community.  But for me, the pace felt a little too slow. I found myself skipping ahead a few pages here and there (and then sheepishly going back because guilt wouldn’t let me cheat properly). I didn’t connect deeply with any of the characters, which made the unhurried unfolding of events harder to settle into. In her other novels, I’ve always found a character or a thread of emotion that I have connected with. Here, I just didn't care as much as I needed to to remain in the story.

The ending also didn’t quite land for me. Without giving too much away, it felt oddly abrupt and left me feeling unsatisfied. That may well have been Kent’s intention, after all, the story is based on a real historical case, but I missed the sense of emotional connection that I’ve come to expect from her.

Still, even a Hannah Kent novel that doesn’t quite work for me is a novel worth reading. The writing alonehas the ability to embed you in a historical moment and I admire this so much in her books. If I had to summarise The Good People, I would say that it is a slow-burn immersion into a past world where folklore and reality blur, but for me it lacked the heartbeat that made Burial Rites and Devotion so unforgettable.

And now, having read all of Hannah Kent’s books, I’m left with the realisation that I’ll have to wait for her to write another before I can lose myself in her words again.

Six Degrees of Separation (Aug): From The Safekeep to Australian Poems to Read to the Very Young

 The meme is hosted by Books are My Favourite Best and is described thus: On the first Saturday of every month, a book is chosen as a starting point and linked to six other books to form a chain. Readers and bloggers are invited to join in by creating their own ‘chain’ leading from the selected book. Each person’s chain will look completely different. It doesn’t matter what the connection is or where it takes you – just take us on the journey with you.

This month we start with the 2025 Winner of the Women's Prize for Fiction: The Safekeep by Yael van der Wouden.  

I read this very recently and you can read my review here. 

The book is described:

An exhilarating tale of twisted desire, histories and homes, and the unexpected shape of revenge – for readers of Patricia Highsmith, Sarah Waters and Ian McEwan’s Atonement. It is fifteen years after the Second World War, and Isabel has built herself a solitary life of discipline and strict routine in her late mother’s country home, with not a fork or a word out of place. But all is upended when her brother Louis delivers his graceless new girlfriend, Eva, at Isabel’s doorstep – as a guest, there to stay for the season… In the sweltering heat of summer, Isabel’s desperate need for control reaches boiling point. What happens between the two women leads to a revelation which threatens to unravel all she has ever known.

First stop: Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier. I've chosen a classic gothic novel here. The unnamed second Mrs. de Winter arrives at Manderley and is haunted (metaphorically) by the presence of Rebecca. This is perhaps my favourite book. Like The Safekeep, it's about a woman’s identity blurring and a house filled with heavy memories. My review. 

Second stop: The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters. Another mystery unravelling in a British manor, this one falling into decay and, like The Safekeep, set after the war. A doctor becomes entangled with a family struggling with a perceived haunting. My review.

Third stop: The Secret River by Kate Grenville. I'm not quite sure why this one came to mind next. It brings us to early Australian invasion history, where a man stakes a riverbank and builds a life on stolen lands. I think perhaps it's the wilful ignorance and moral consequences of theft that connects the books in my mind. There is definitely a common theme of moral reckoning across history. My review.

Fourth stop: The Timeless Land by Eleanor Dark. The Timeless Land expands the scope to a broader historical setting. While The Secret River offers an intimate perspective on one family’s journey, Dark’s novel provides a sweeping account of the first years of British invasion from multiple viewpoints, including the Aboriginal peoples. Like Grenville, Dark grapples with the complex legacies of settlement and challenges the dominant narratives of Australian history. I was actually interviewed on Radio National about this book. My review. 

Fifth stop: Blinky Bill by Dorothy Wall. The Timeless Land holds a special place in my own history. It was my grandmother’s favourite book; one she treasured and reread many times. This personal connection leads me to Blinky Bill, another Australian classic, but from a very different angle. Blinky Bill is a children’s story centred on the adventures of a mischievous koala, embodying a playful and irreverent spirit of one type of Australian childhood. The copy I have belonged to my grandmother, linking these two books through family.

Sixth stop: Australian Poems to Read to the Very Young. From the whimsy of Blinky Bill, for me the chain naturally moves to Australian Poems to Read to the Very Young. This collection of poems is deeply embedded in my own childhood memories, and I can still recite many by heart. Like Blinky Bill, it evokes a sense of place and identity shaped by the landscape and language of Australia. Just reading one of these poems returns me to special moments in my childhood.

For good measure, click here to see what in read in July. 

Review: The Safe Keep by Yael Van Der Wouden

This one really got under my skin.

The Safe Keep is one of those books that creeps up on you. It’s set in the Netherlands not long after WWII, and the whole thing feels steeped in silence and tension. In other words, it’s not fast-paced, but you can feel from the opening that there is a sense of unease in the story that it clearly building toward something. 

The story follows Isabel, who’s living alone in her family's home, a large family home in the country side filled with memories that Isabel can't and doesn't want to escape. She’s somewhat cut off from the world, emotionally and practically. There is almost a faint agoraphobia or at the very least severe anxiety feel to the way that Isabel lives. That is, until Eva turns up - her brother’s fiancee, who comes to stay with Isabel. From the moment the two meet in a restaurant, you can feel the tension between them. Isabel immediately feels that Eva is hiding something. Eva appears confident and curious, but at the same time is a little hard to pin down. The dynamic between the two women is intense from the beginning. They are watchful of each other but there is always a sense of something deeper going on underneath for them both. 

The relationship between Isabel and Eva is full of tension, and part of that tension is sexual. Initially, it’s not labelled, and nothing is spelled out too directly, but increasingly there’s an undeniable undercurrent of desire between them. I liked the way the novel handled this. Their attraction is just there in the characters and the way they move around each other. It’s messy, complicated, and laced with repression which is exactly right for the time period and the emotional tone of the book.

The other thread I found really fascinating was the one about postwar theft and hidden complicity. There’s this idea bubbling under the surface that after the war ended, not everyone came out of it clean. Some people took advantage of others misfortune, knowingly or with wilful ignorance. There’s a growing sense that Isabel’s family may have benefitted from things that were never really theirs. That kind of moral murkiness adds a lot of depth to the story. It’s not just about personal memory or trauma, it’s also about national memory and who gets to tell the story of what happened.

The writing is spare and controlled and full of atmosphere. There’s something unsettling about the way van der Wouden builds the story. I felt like I was waiting for something awful to happen, even when everything was quiet. And when the reveal does come, it sinks in almost with a bit of a sickening feeling. The ending is quietly devastating, but at the same time hopeful and so I was left with a haunted feeling I actually really appreciate in a book.

This will be a challenging read for some people. It’s ambiguous and emotionally chilly at times but if you like a book with complicated female characters and moral grey zones that leaves you slightly off balance, The Safe Keep is absolutely worth your time.