Novel About My Wife
Tom Stone, skinnyish, fortyish, English, is madly in love with his wife Ann, an Australian in self-imposed exile in London. Pushing forty and expecting their first child, they buy their first, semi-derelict house in Hackney.
They believe this is their settled future, despite Tom’s stalling career and their spiralling money troubles. But Ann becomes convinced she’s being shadowed by a local homeless man whose presence seems like a terrible omen.
As her pregnancy progresses she spends hours cleaning and reorganising the house, and sits up all night talking with a new feverish passion.
As their child grows, so too does Tom’s sense of an impending, nameless threat. Their home appears beset with vermin, smells and strange noises. On the verge of losing the house, Tom makes a decision that he hopes will save their lives.
Dark, sensuous and compelling, this is a taut, chilling novel about the need for escape and the perils of forgetting.
Prizes, Reviews, and Media for Novel About My Wife
PRIZES
Winner, 2009 Believer Book of the Year Award
Winner, 2009 Montana Book Award
REVIEWS
‘A beautiful, shocking book, it had me gripped from its very first sentence.’ Maggie O’Farrell
‘A sensuous and compassionate study of a doomed relationship, which suggests that love can survive the vicissitudes of modern life; and, perhaps, death itself.’ Daily Mail
‘A brilliantly written psychological thriller and a dark portrait of contemporary urban life… one of the most successfully drawn male characters by a female writer I have ever read.’ Pick of the Week, Sydney Morning Herald
‘… a tense and surprisingly funny read… It’s a cliche to say a novel examines ‘the way we live now,’ but Perkins squarely confronts what Tom and Ann refuse to: the way we live with crushing debt, lack of job security and the terrifying sense of being one crisis away from total chaos. The fact that she does so with a gripping story and a very dark sense of humor is remarkable.’ National Public Radio
‘…a novel about middle-class anxiety that is actually terrifying.’ The Believer
‘… you care about (Tom) to an extent that reveals Perkins’s subtle power.’ The Guardian
‘Elegantly unsettling… The writing is arresting and the pace relentless. …this vivid and assured portrait of restless London and its precarious, precious artistic class reveals an author at the top of her craft.’ NZ Listener
‘… her best work yet… Perkins has brilliantly refined the observational style that was the jewel of her early promise: she coolly dissects the foibles and predilections of her milieu with knife-sharp sentences that lay her characters bare in a flick of the literary wrist.’ The Age
MEDIA
An article from the Shanghai Daily News about Novel About My Wife
