Originally published in 3000Melbourne magazine.
How to be a Good Wife is a cold, harrowing psychological thriller that wades through the murky waters of marriage, trauma and madness. Set in a remote, unnamed Scandinavian village, this is British writer Emma Chapman’s debut novel, a suspenseful and cleverly written mystery with parallels to S.J. Watson’s bestselling Before I Go to Sleep.
“Never question his authority, for he always does what is best for the family, and has your interests at heart.” These are the words Marta lives by, guided by a tattered handbook given to her by her mother-in-law on her wedding day. She and Hector have now been married for many years, and their adult son, Kyan, has recently moved away from their home to the city, where he has a fiancé.
Numbed by the little pink pills Hector tells her she must take to be well, Marta fills blank, endless days with housewifely tasks, venturing out only to go to the market. “Make your home a place of peace and order,” her handbook instructs. “Never hurry or nag him along. His time is precious, and must be treated as such.”
Lately, though, Marta has been rebelling by only pretending to swallow her pills. Now, peculiar things are happening to her. There are flashes of movement in the corner of her eye. She is gripped by “a strange, echoing fear, slipping through the cracks that have formed in the memory”. Then she begins to see increasingly vivid and frequent images of young teenage girl, with long blonde hair, smudged eyeliner and dirty pyjamas. Layers of reality are peeled away, and Marta becomes consumed by a terror that makes her question everything she knows about her past and her life with Hector.
There is a coldness that pervades the novel. Marta and Hector’s home and marriage are devoid of colour and feeling, and the anonymous Nordic village is bleak and claustrophobic. Chapman mirrors this through carefully controlled language and dialogue that is chilly and spare. As Marta’s behaviour becomes more and more unstable, it is difficult to know whose version of the truth we can trust, and this deliberate uncertainty keeps the novel enthralling right through to its brave and melancholy end.