Novel About My Wife

By Emily Perkins

From one of Britain’s most exciting young writers comes the story of a couple’s emotional and complicated relationship … from the husband’s perspective. Novel About My Wife is narrated by Tom Stone as he searches through the mysteries his wife has left him with. The reader is left to discover what dark thing has come between him and his beloved partner.

Tom Stone is, as well as being cheerfully neurotic, madly in love with his wife Ann, an Australian in self-imposed exile in London. Pushing forty and newly pregnant, they buy their first house in Hackney. It seems they are moving into a settled future, despite spiralling money troubles. But Ann is dogged by a local homeless man whose constant presence comes to feel like a terrible omen. As her pregnancy progresses Ann finds solace in her new friendship with Kate, a woman Tom is both repelled by and peculiarly drawn to. Their home is beset with vermin, smells and strange noises. Is this normal for London, or is the measure of normality in this city actually mad?

Novel About My Wife is Tom’s effort to understand this woman he has been so blindly in love with, and to peel back the past to see where the real threats in their lives were hiding. It is an investigation of guilt, love, forgiveness, and the perils of forgetting.

She wasn’t one of those women who hate their feet, who hate their bodies, the kind who turn the sight of their ass in broad daylight into a state secret. (God, you just find yourself dying for a glimpse, you’ll do anything to get it, hover outside the bathroom door, hide under a table, pull back the sheets when she’s sleeping. Then because of all the mystery you end up, when you’re finally feasting your eyes, thinking, ‘hey, maybe she has got something to worry about.’) Ann didn’t care. Her body was open for viewing. It was one of the ways she distracted you from what was inside her head.
--from Novel About My Wife

• Language: English
• Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
• Release date: Oct 29, 2010
• ISBN: 9780385673112

Emily Perkins

Emily Perkins is the author of a prize-winning collection of short stories, Not Her Real Name, and four novels, including Novel About My Wife (winner of the NZ Book Award and the Believer Magazine Book of the Year, The Forrests (longlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction) and Lioness (shortlisted for the Ockham NZ Prize for Fiction). Her work for stage and screen includes co-writing the film adaptation of Eleanor Catton's novel The Rehearsal (dir. Alison Maclean), an adaptation of Ibsen's A Doll's House, and the original play The Made. She lives in New Zealand.

Reviews for Novel About My Wife

[gypsysmom_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This was a rather strange book. First of all, there are no chapters. About the only breaks are excerpts from a diary about a trip to Fiji. Secondly, it's never clear if this diary is by Anne (the wife) or by Tom (the husband). Fiji is where they got married, on the spur of the moment while Tom was supposed to be working on a script for an Australian director, Haliburton. The bulk of the book is by Tom, written after Anne died. He tells the story of their last year together while Anne was pregnant. While it is obvious Anne died until the very end the cause of her death is not apparent. Thirdly, even when you know the cause of her death (by suicide) it is not clear what her exact impetus was. It seems to be tied to Haliburton because he knew of her (or maybe knew her) when Anne was growing up in Sydney. Or maybe Anne is just mentally ill (I don't mean to minimize mental illness by that comment just indicate that the cause of suicide often is mental illness) because she sees insects and a dangerous man when no-one else does. Possibly she was suffering from post-partum depression or acid flashbacks. There is just no neat explanation of her death. Maybe that was the point but if so, I think it could have been handled better.I don't think that Emily Perkins was particularly convincing writing as a man. Unlike Clara Callan which was written by Richard Wright, I kept finding that Tom's actions seemed bizarre. He just stands beside a gate while a gang of boys swarm over it and let them mug him. I don't know of many men who wouldn't either take off or fight back in that situation. He agonizes about not having any money and then goes on a holiday to Cornwall and commits a number of other frivolous expenses. I just never really believed Tom and since virtually all of the book is in his voice that leaves a big hole.

[coolmama_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Spooky and dark and impending doom the entire time.Tom Stone is madly in love with his wife Ann. They have recently bought a house in up and coming Hackney, London even though Tom is a failing screenwriter, and Ann has a part time job in a hospital in London. However, they need more space as Ann is soon to be having their first child.I loved that that the book is told from Tom's perspective (and that the book is written by the talented Emily Perkins) and from the opening page, we know that Ann is dead.However, it is all a little murky -- sort of like the entire novel is written with an opaque cloth around it. Much is left unsaid and unexplained.I found the prose to be well-written, tight and well developed character study of a couple's life which is slowly falling apart.

[suzannie1 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

A friend lent me this book and I thought it was wierd - and not in a good way ! Too unbelievable and a bit simple I thought , psycho wife sets up her own fake death to set her husband up ! and the ending is terrible!

[labontea-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Compelling, well-written, and achingly sad. (I'm currently reading Nabokov's Timofey Pnin as a comic antidote to pull me out of the funk after reading this.) Written from the perspective of a man whose wife has died, you slowly learn the details leading to her death. Makes me wonder about the solidity of our relationships, and how well we know people in our lives. I want to read more by Perkins, but my public libraries carry hardly any of her books...

[bhowell_35 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I found this a compulsive read and loved it. While not quite a thriller it is a chilling psychological drama that is impossible to put down. Scary, smart and funny. Highly recommended.

[orchidj_2 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Loved the language Perkins used - the beginning paragraph is absolutely beautiful and evokes a real sense of loss and love for Tom's late wife.I would have preferred a few things to be made a little clearer by the end - several parts are left as loose ends, causing me to flip back through the book to check I hadn't missed anything.