While I’ll try to avoid going into spoiler territory, I will confess to holding certain suspicions from early on. However, it is White’s skilful plotting and pacing that I found most successful. She sensed a primal darkness standing over them, following her like a shadow, and when she went downstairs and saw that body, it would clap around her shoulders, drag her down and stay with her forever. And, their exploration of that eternal question, ‘How well do we really know the people we love?’ builds suspense. The dual narratives offer readers engaging character growth, the ‘still waters run deep’ variety. Oh yeah, and why not throw something else that ‘totally weirds me out’ into that melting pot, taxidermy!Īdd in several of my favourite fiction ingredients - original descriptors, alternating narratives and feisty female leads - and you have a recipe for success. But in The Wife and the Widow, White has ratcheted that up a notch by making Belport Island (thankfully fictional) a popular summer holiday destination for Melbourne’s affluent, sowing the seeds for simmering tensions and acrimony with the locals who loathe yet depend on their excess. Personally, I do not think you can get a much creepier setting than winter on a windswept small island only accessible by boat. Disclosure: If you click a link in this post and make a purchase, I may earn a small commission.
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