The wives by Tarryn Fisher
Blurb: You’ve never met the other wives. None of you know each other,
you see your husband only one day a week. Thursday. But you don’t care, you
love him that much. Or at least that’s what you’ve told yourself…
And then, one day it all changes.
You thought you were fine with this,
with only having a fraction of a husband. But you can’t help yourself, you
start to dig. You begin tracking them down, the other days… Who is Monday and
why does she have bruises on her arms? Is she being abused? By who? Her
husband? Your husband?
What else is he keeping from you? And
who is he, really?
About the author: Tarryn Fisher is
the author of several novels. She was born and raised in Johannesburg, South
Africa, and immigrated to America with her parents when she was thirteen. She
earned a degree in psychology.
My take :
Okay, let me catch
my breath! I finished reading the book today, and my head is still spinning! So
convoluted is the story, with such twists and turns that it leaves you
wondering what exactly happened. But that exactly is also the downside of the
book. Let me explain.
The story is from
the point of view of Thursday, a woman, whose husband is a polygamist. A
polygamist is a person who has more than one wife or husband
at the same time. So, Seth, her husband is a polygamist with three wives,
Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday. This is Thursday’s story.
Seth keeps his three relationships
completely separate, and parallel. None of the wives know the other wives’
names and they have never met. Thursday is okay with this arrangement, and
every Thursday, the day of the week that her husband visits her, she goes into
the role of the perfect wife, constantly wondering whether or not she has
beaten the other two to it.
But one fine day, Thursday finds a
doctor’s receipt with a woman’s name in the pocket of Seth’s laundered clothes.
Her curiosity piques, and she wants to find out who this woman is. Whether she
is Monday or Tuesday. So behind Seth’s back, she goes to see this woman, her
husband’s third wife. As she gets to know her, she realizes that her body bears
bruises, marks suggestive of abuse. Does her – their – husband, the loving
caring Seth, hit her? And from there begins a twisted and convoluted tale that
gets murkier by the minute.
After a while, we are confused. Is
Seth a psychopath? Is Thursday insane? Or are the other two wives up to
something?
The premise is good and the narration
is gripping. The flow of the story is fluid and I was literally clenching my
fists in anticipation.
But as we cross the middle of the
story, the sequence of events completely baffles us so much that we can’t tell what
is true and what isn’t. The character of Thursday, which has been developed
nicely from the beginning, suddenly loses its charm and everything that we have
come to believe is left dangling in a big question mark. The end brings
another, last, revolting shock, but by then we are so used to getting shocked
that it really doesn’t affect anymore.
This is one of those stories where I
feel that the third-person POV would have been better rather than first-person.
And probably that is why it has become so confusing.
There are unnecessary parts which
could have been easily skipped, and some parts could have been written in more
details.
There are many characters but the
story focuses so much on Thursday that the other characters are very
ill-defined. I would have loved if the POV had shifted to Seth or Monday, or
Tuesday, or even Lauren, her colleague, once in a while. That would probably
have clarified the plot a bit more.
Overall, this is a good psychological
thriller to begin with but loses its charm somewhere down the line. I read it because
of the hype it has created amongst readers of this genre. It is a good read,
but definitely not matching the said hype. I rate it 3 stars.
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