How to Be a Good Wife

August 26, 2013
In Chapman’s chilling debut, it’s immediately clear that Marta Bjornstad is uncomfortable in her empty nest, with her son Kylan living in the city and her husband Hector more distant than ever before. Cracks begin to appear in Marta’s formerly comfortable life: she discovers cigarettes in her purse and enjoys smoking them, though she has never smoked before. She yearns to travel, although for the past 20 years her life has been circumscribed by the mountains on either side of the small valley in the unnamed Scandinavian country in which she and Hector live. She stops taking her medication and begins to question some of the things she’d previously taken for granted—for instance, Hector’s insistence that she take her medicine (he even placed the pills on her tongue). She also begins to see a girl in dirty pajamas, who seems to need her help. And her outright hostility to Kylan’s new fiancée only widens the cracks, alienating the person she loves the most. As she examines more closely what’s beneath her family’s habits and some of her own memories, she becomes certain that she has uncovered a terrible dark truth that—if she reveals it—will tear their lives apart. Despite a far-fetched conclusion, Chapman excels at creating tension and suspense.

August 15, 2013
A mad housewife learns that her problems may not all be imaginary in Chapman's disquieting debut. Somewhere in an unnamed Scandinavian country, in an isolated village, a middle-aged woman named Marta Bjornstad has gone off her medication, unbeknownst to her doting husband, Hector. The time is apparently the present, although there is not a smartphone in sight, and the Internet is only referred to once. Hector, a schoolteacher 20 years her senior, has always been an avuncular figure in Marta's life, ever since he rescued her, as a recently orphaned young woman, from a desperate situation whose particulars are shrouded in a haze of amnesia. Marriage to Hector has, for the last two decades or so, been pleasant but always overshadowed by hypercritical mother-in-law Matilda, who, despite her relief at Hector's belated marriage, has always made Marta feel inadequate, however strictly she follows the precepts outlined in Matilda's wedding gift, a retro guidebook entitled How to be a Good Wife. Now, however, Marta's delicate equilibrium has been upset by empty-nest syndrome: Her only child, Kylan, has left home for a job in the city and is engaged to Katya, who, disturbingly, reminds Marta of her younger, dimly recalled self. As the medication wears off, Marta begins to experience some startling visions. She sees a thin girl, apparently a ballet dancer, in dreams and in real time. Like a specter out of Sixth Sense, the girl beckons, seemingly desperate to tell Marta something. Gradually, it dawns on Marta and the reader that her hallucinations may actually be emerging suppressed memories. Without spoilers it's impossible to specify further exactly how these snippets of recalled trauma reach critical mass. Suffice to say that the twist that propels expectations in a whole new direction is masterfully wrought. However, the outcome, driven by some highly improbable circumstances and a demonstrable lack of ingenuity on the part of the protagonist, will leave readers, particularly feminists and/or victims' advocates, very dissatisfied indeed. Gripping but rather implausible.

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September 1, 2013
Much like the unreliable narrator of S. J. Watson's Before I Go to Sleep (2011), to which this debut novel bears a strong resemblance, the narrator of Chapman's clever chiller, which is set in an unnamed Scandinavian country, seems uncertain of her own history and circumstances. Marta stopped taking her medication after her son left home and is being visited by a series of imagesor are they repressed memories?of a young girl, always hungry and dressed in ill-fitting, increasingly filthy pajamas, who is confined to a small room. Marta's husband, Hector, 20 years her senior, tells a romantic story of their first meeting, but Marta is beginning to suspect that the stories Hector tells are fabrications. The one constant is her referencing of the marriage manual How to Be a Good Wife, whose pithy maxims ( Let your husband take care of the finances. Make it your job to be pretty ) read like the diary of a mad housewife. Although some may find the ambiguous ending frustrating, others will be drawn into this claustrophobic examination of the meaning of marriage.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)

May 15, 2013

Good wife Marta has been married for so long that she can hardly remember a past without Hector. But now strange visions flit at the corner of her eye, including that of a blonde girl no one else can see. Is she losing her mind or starting to remember something important? Look for promotion at BookExpo America (BEA).

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Starred review from February 1, 2014
After 25 years of marriage, Marta Bjornstad has gone off her meds. She can quote passages with ease from "How To Be a Good Wife" (a wedding present from her mother-in-law) but is increasingly unable to operate in the world. She's either the traumatized victim of a brutal act in the past, or she's descending into psychosis, but which is it? Since Marta is telling her own story, it's hard to decide. Susan Lyons as reader is a near-perfect choice. All characters are rendered skillfully, but with the inner voice of Marta, Lyons strikes just the right notes of hesitation, desperation, and despair. VERDICT Highly recommended. ["[T]his confident and compelling debut novel is a chilling and very creepy tale of deception and distrust," read the starred review of the St. Martin's hc, "LJ" Xpress Reviews, 9/20/13.]--Kristen L. Smith, Loras Coll. Lib., Dubuque, IA

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