Spoiler alert
This book won the Ned Kelly Award for Crime Fiction 2020 but given that crime fiction is not one of my preferred genres, it escaped my notice completely. Anticipating by the front cover a Shetland-esque novel, I was surprised to find that it was set in Australia, on a fictional island off the Victorian coast. The island is home to Abby, the “wife” of the title who lives there all year, as the population swells and dwindles with the holiday seasons. Her husband Ray is a handyman, and they live with their two children in an old house that Ray rarely uses his handyman skills to improve. She has a job in the small local supermarket which doesn’t provide enough income during the off-season, and she has embarked on the rather odd hobby of taxidermy in her garage, fed by the supply of roadkill.
The “widow” of the title is Kate, who is perplexed to find that her doctor husband has concocted an elaborate hoax to convince her that he has attended an international conference. Instead, his body is found at their holiday house on the island. Kate and her father-in-law, with whom she has a strained relationship- travel to the island to try to make sense of his death.
The narrative switches between the two women, both of whom find themselves having to re-evaluate what they thought was the truth about their husbands. I can’t say anymore- there is a really clever twist that had me stopping mid-paragraph, then flicking back to see if I had misread. I very rarely re-read books, but I am tempted to read this one to see how he did it. The writing of place is so evocative that you can easily picture the island in your mind, and his rendering of the emotions of the two women is deft and confident. But the twist is the absolute highlight and alone makes the book well worth reading.
My rating: 9/10
Sourced from: CAE bookgroups.
The Resident Judge of Port Phillip 