The Silent Wife - A.S.A Harrison

'..it becomes chillingly clear that nothing is remotely as it was.'

Todd Gilbert and Jodi Brett live together in Chicago, and they have been a couple for over twenty years. Jodi is a therapist working part-time from home and Todd is an entrepreneur who has established a successful property business. They enjoy a comfortable lifestyle, but beneath the surface of their relationship, serious cracks are starting to appear, and when Jodi discovers what Todd has been up to most recently, the equilibrium is about to be unsettled forever. I won't go into the plotline further as it is best discovered as you read.

I found The Silent Wife a dark, fascinating and well-observed character study, intelligent, insightful and absorbing, and a book that held my interest and which I wanted to return to. The psychology of it all was very clever and interesting to observe, coupled with the insights from Jodi being a psychologist herself. From early on in the novel, there is a creeping sense of dread, a feeling that things are slowly going to unravel and come apart and ultimately be destructive, and I was compelled to read on, observing the complex lives and behaviour of this pair, the deception and then the desperation. I felt sadness at times thinking about this couple. Though they are not necessarily very likeable creations, in fact they are deeply flawed, neither wholly good nor bad, for me that made them all the more fascinating both individually and when viewed together; it was compelling reading getting inside their heads.

The author had a keen grasp of what makes her characters tick, of motivations, desire, greed, need, stability and routine. She dissects relationships really well, for example that of Todd and his father, or Jodi and her siblings. She also describes the minutiae of life beautifully, such as the everyday routine that keeps Jodi's life running. For me, this is not so much a fast paced, page-turning thriller (though it is certainly thrilling at times), it is more of a measured psychological journey through the breakdown of a relationship, slowly exposing the strengths and weaknesses of two people who know each other inside out and yet in some ways who don't know each other at all. 

I'd seen many reviews of this novel prior to reading it, in fact I wish I'd perhaps not read so many beforehand, as some were very favourable about it and others weren't very keen at all. Nevertheless I tried to go into it with an open mind and for me it was a cleverly crafted and perceptive tale of human desires, insecurities and jealousies from a talented writer. I'm sad to read that she has since passed away. 

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