The Silent Wife by A.S.A. Harrison

The Silent Wife by A.S.A. Harrison Penguin, 2013 ISBN: 978-0143123231 326 p.p.

A marriage gone sour. A novel that announces from the beginning that the wife will be a murderess. Ever since the runaway success of Gone Girl, readers have been returning to novels about the dark and diabolical within marriages that seem perfect from the outside; novels that allow us to discover the murderous wives within. That this book carries Wife within the title suggests something about the intended audience—suggesting that women, more than men, perhaps, would enjoy the his-and-hers narrative of the dissolution of a long-term marriage. That we know from the beginning that Jodi, the silent wife the title refers to, will become a murderer, tells us we’re within the territory of the diabolical within marriage.

And yet, perhaps one of the most frustrating things to see in the descriptions and reviews of this book is that this novel is compared to Gone Girl. Most of the reason is that in order to be in the category of another Gone Girl sort of book, a novel needs to be a book centered around a female protagonist that we initially like, then discover the depths of her psychological ugliness, centered on a male victim, her husband. I dislike this comparison for several reasons: first, Gone Girl was never the first book with a dark protagonist. And in truth, that’s not what we have in this book. Jodi, the wife in The Silent Wife is not Amy, nor is Todd, the husband, like Nick. Further, this narrative does not rely on the same heightened level of dramatic suspense that Gone Girl does. The storytelling involved here works on a very different level, with a lot less drama and a lot more meditation.

The Silent Wife is a slow, reflective book, befitting its two main characters. Jodi and Todd, who have been together for a couple decades, have created lives that step around each others’ eccentricities and failures. Todd is a successful property flipper and construction manager. Jodi prefers to work at her psychotherapy practice part-time, and spend the rest of her time with her own pursuits such as pilates, keeping a tidy home, and learning how to recreate gourmet meals. Divided into alternating chapters of “Him” and “Her” we follow both Jodi Brett and her husband Todd Gilbert. Both characters are likeable and unlikeable. And it’s the mix between these two sets of character traits that helps create the tension that keeps this novel moving. The true momentum of this book is in its careful analysis of their present and their past, looking over each element until we—the readers—begin to see the cracks in the surface. It’s more psychoanalysis than psychological thriller.

We learn early on that the marriage isn’t so much perfect as it is a very delicate balance between the two; a balance based on both their eccentricities. Todd is a serial cheater. Jodi knows this, but she also realizes that she would disturb the balance if she were to acknowledge his philandering publicly. So she tucks it away, not even dwelling on it in the privacy of her own mind. It’s not a denial as much as it’s a recognition that that could be their undoing. And indeed, it proves to be the impetus for such an unravelling. Meanwhile, Todd’s not exactly evil: he is a real estate developer and makes good money, allowing Jodi the ability to work only part-time. He seems to truly like the orderliness of the life Jodi creates for him.

As the narrative progresses, we learn that Todd’s latest dalliance is with a coed named Natasha. She is everything that Jodi is not. Natasha doesn’t hesitate or spend time considering alternatives; she just acts. She is young and voluptuous. She encourages Todd to move outside his comfort zone, try new things, and take risks when seeing her. And then she tells Todd that she’s pregnant, and the whole story shifts sideways.

In many ways, this novel is one that is a meditation upon how much agency people have both inside and outside of their relationships. After Natasha’s pregnancy is announced, we see how precarious Jodi’s position is: having wanted to remain at least nominally independent, Jodi refused Todd’s repeated requests that she marry him. As a result, Todd is able to walk away from his life with Jodi, owing her nothing. He doesn’t want to, but those he turns to for advice want him to completely cut her off. And Jodi does not know how to survive outside of the walled-in life she’s built for herself in their condo. She bristles at the possibility of having to work full-time and take on more than a handful of carefully vetted clients. She bristles at a loss of economic comfort. She bristles at having to move somewhere else. She continues to use his credit cards until Todd cuts them off. It’s then that we see how constricted her world has become.

Meanwhile, we see just how trapped Todd has become as well. What began as an affair with someone he chose comes quickly to limit his own options. Natasha is calling most of the shots. Todd, the successful property manager and construction manager is no match for this twenty-something woman’s schemes. And that she is the daughter of one of Todd’s lifetime friends adds further constraints as he loses his main source of male support. Perhaps the most agency that Jodi or Todd had in this book is the two decades they spent keeping the elaborate balance of their two lives together. This novel, focused on how fast their lives unravel once the first string is loosened by Natasha, suggests that both have lost most, if not all, of their agency in the present.

Perhaps the most compelling element of this book is how well A.S.A. Harrison builds up her portraits of both Jodi and Todd. Here, both are likeable as well as naïve. Both have their strengths and their weaknesses. And following the psychoanalytic bent of Jodi’s work, we learn through the portraiture about their childhood narratives, gaining glimpses into what has molded them into the insecure adults they are.

Finishing the book is a bittersweet experience. I found myself enthralled with the story and by Harrison’s storytelling ability and her exquisite portraiture. Afterwards, I found myself searching online to find out what else she had written or planned to publish, only to find out that she’d died weeks before this, her first novel, was published. It’s sad that we’ll not be able to read another of her novels.

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Susan Harrison was a Canadian writer and artist who published under the name A. S. A. Harrison. Her previous nonfiction books include Orgasms, Revelations with Margaret Dragu, and Zodicat Speaks. The Silent Wife was her debut novel, published in June 2013 to critical acclaim. The book, telling the story of the slow murderous disintegration of a marriage, belongs to the subgenre known as Domestic Noir. She was at work on a new psychological thriller when she died in 2013, shortly before the novel's publication. Harrison was married to the visual artist John Massey and lived in Toronto. (bio adapted from www.asaharrison.com and Wikipedia).