I read a lot in the women’s suspense subgenre, searching perpetually for the next satisfying story. Broadly speaking, women’s suspense fiction involves a female protagonist experiencing escalating tension that arises from some kind of uncertainty. Sometimes murder or the hint of it is central to the plot, but not always. Infidelity, domestic violence, and infertility play a more central role in the plot than in the general suspense genre.
It’s never difficult to find new titles in this category. I have read over fifty without hitting the same author twice. They beckon with shiny blurbs comparing their wares to Alfred Hitchcock and Gillian Flynn. Often the praise goes something like this, “A high-octane thrill ride! Buckle your seat belt. You’ll never see the final twist coming!”
The best of them, of course, deliver on this promise. I read The Woman in the Window over a single Sunday. I was so enthralled by The Wife Between Us that I kept stealing away from my nephew’s football game to read snippets here and there. There are others that absorbed me just as much: The Silent Wife, Sometimes I Lie, What Was Mine. It is a genuine pleasure to be held captive by a narrative.
Alas, there is also a tendency in this subgenre to peddle in cheap misogyny. Authors often take the easy way out by engaging in crass female stereotypes. As a seasoned reader of this genre, I have seen women sold out more times than I can count.
Knowing all of this, I approached Tarryn Fisher’s The Wives with some trepidation. The basic premise was a flashing warning sign. It was the #1 book in the country last week, though, and I just couldn’t resist the thrill ride.
The narrator calls herself Thursday. She is a nurse in Seattle who drinks Coke for breakfast and was primed for marriage by an antifeminist mother. At 28, Thursday is madly in love with her husband Seth. The problem is that, due to his Mormon upbringing, Seth insists on having two other wives. This isn’t Big Love, where the sister wives all live in adjacent property and help raise each other’s kids. Instead, Seth commutes between Seattle and Portland spending parts of each week with different women. They know of each other but they don’t know each other.
From this intriguing premise, the plot takes flight. There are twists and turns that cause the reader to question everything they know. A central dilemma is revealed at the two-thirds point and it’s quite clever.
The pacing is breakneck. I didn’t want to get up from my chair until I clicked the last puzzle piece in place. There was a stretch towards the end where I thought I had found another one of those rare, completely satisfying reads. My hopes were dashed, though, by the final sequence in which the author tries a final twist that causes the whole structure to collapse. Why is it that authors so often fall back on this kind of tired misogyny? Women deserve heroines whose identities are not solely dependent on male approval and attention. This particular author had a chance to write a plausible narrative that does not hinge on women fighting over men. And she blew it by trading in on some of the worst stereotypes of women.
Women deserve better than this.
Books Smitten 