C
Genre: Literary Fiction, Mystery/Thriller
The Pocket Wife by Susan Crawford is a twisty-turning thriller that reminded of Gone Girl. I enjoyed the beginning immensely, but the end had me gritting my teeth in rage.
I tend to gravitate more toward thrillers that are less about the shock-value of gore and more about psychological suspense, probably because of all those Gothics I read as a kid. For me, the best kind of suspense comes when a sense of wrongness pervades the text and as a reader you can feel bad things on the horizon but cannot identify what those things are yet. I also love an unreliable narrator. Give me some Gillian Flynn and Linwood Barclay! Make me question everything I know! Is the hero a villain? I love this shit.
That’s why, at least initially, The Pocket Wife worked so well for me.
Dana Catrell is a suburban housewife. Her husband Peter, a successful attorney, is often absent. Her son is now grown and away at college. Left alone, Dana is floundering. She suffers from bipolar disorder and alternates between depression and mania. One day she wakes up on her sofa after a boozy lunch with a neighbor. Unable to remember much of the day, she’s shocked to find out her neighbor, Celia, was murdered.
This is where the delightful unreliable narrator’s voice comes in. Rather than just the reader mistrusting Dana, though, Dana doesn’t trust herself. Celia had approached Dana with a cellphone picture of Dana’s husband out with another woman and had implied that Peter was being unfaithful. Dana remembers being upset, being drunk, but not what happened next.
This book feels like a Hitchcock movie–Dana’s husband, Celia’s husband, and even the neighbors all seem sinister and potentially guilty. Dana’s world gets even more unsettled when she discovers Celia’s number stored on her husband’s cellphone. Peter claimed not to know Celia, only having seen her in passing, but according to his phone he called her several times.
Dana pursues this line of thought–but when she checks the phone later she finds Celia’s number gone. She also manages to track down Celia’s cellphone, and that damning picture of her husband she remembers Celia showing her is missing. A lot of her anxiety stems from the fact that she’s sliding into a manic episode, making her question her own judgement.
I don’t have any personal experience with bipolar disorder, so I can’t say whether or not Crawford does a fair job of presenting what a person who suffers from it is feeling. She does spend a lot of time exploring Dana’s mental illness, however. Dana reflects about her first manic episode, when she was in college. She felt invinicable, forgoing sleep and food, convinced she had tuned in to some larger power. When her boyfriend found her perched on top of their building, convinced she could fly, she was admitted to Bellevue.
Dana is aware of her illness and knows that her judgement will be skewed. She can feel herself getting worse and knows she only has a short time before she needs to get help to regulate. But the mania also makes her feel sharper and smarter, and she’s desperate to find Celia’s killer–even if it’s her–before that evaporates.
Dana’s illness is always pressing in on the edges of the text, making the reader acutely feel the clock counting down. It added a wonderful sense of urgency to the book. Even as she gets progressively less coherent by the end of the book, her thoughts, while scattered and fantastic, make sense to the reader.
Adding balance, half the text is told from the point of view of Jack Moss, the detective assigned to Celia’s case. We get to view Dana’s world from an outsider looking in, and it kept the novel from feeling too dreamy or detached.
The narrative is lyrical and descriptive, but occasionally veers into the over-the-top. I thought sometimes that the story became a little lost within the prose. Here’s an example where Jack is reflecting on his wife leaving him:
He’s never really understood the milkiness of women; he doesn’t want to. He thinks it might be worse when they take a sharp, hard thing and stretch it into smoke and wisps of summer nights–ghosts that curl around the bedpost and lie in wait outside the kitchen door.
While I believed Dana’s thoughts–especially as she becomes more ill–might take a turn for the florid, I didn’t buy that this was Jack’s voice. Also, I honestly do not know what “the milkiness of women” means, so if you want to let me know in the comments, I’d appreciate that.
I could overlook my occasional arched eyebrow at the prose though because I really needed to know who the killer was. Like really, really needed to know. It helped tremendously that the pacing of this thriller is superb, so I had never felt like I had a moment to catch my breath.
Then I got to the end. And it pissed me off. I mean really fucking PISSED. ME. OFF.
In order to explain my rage-pants, I have to reveal the killer and ruin the end for you. So if you want to read this book–and honestly, I did enjoy 98% of it–DO NOT READ THESE SPOILERS. I may be totally over-reacting to the end (it did make sense in the context of the story) so again, if you even think you might want to read this, DO NOT READ THE SPOILER BELOW.
Got it?
Okay?
The killer is the prosecutor who is, ironically, assigned to Celia’s case. When Jack confronts her at the end, and presents her with forensic evidence that strongly ties her to the murder, she basically goes “Well, ya got me, copper!” AND THEN TELLS HIM HOW AND WHY SHE DID IT. I mean What. The. Fuck?
I know that in books and in movies there is more closure in murder cases than there is in real life, but I refuse to believe that a savvy, successful lawyer would just damn herself and admit her guilt–and how she did it–just because he found her DNA at the crime scene. She’d keep her mouth shut. She’d hire a lawyer. She’d at least cut a deal before she walked him through the murder. I literally sat up in bed when I was reading then and started swearing. Then I messaged the other Smart Bitches about it and swore some more.
Okay, spoilery bits are over. You may commence with your regularly scheduled reading.
So, I had to give The Pocket Wife a C. I really did enjoy almost all of the book, and I really did think the identity of the killer made sense. It was just the way it was revealed that irked me, and ultimately ruined what otherwise was a terrific thriller.
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Thanks!
Elyse, this sounds like an awesome read. I didn’t read your spoiler because I definitely want to find out for myself. 🙂
I’m so disappointed that no one has commented with the secret meaning of “the milkiness of women” yet. Maybe I’m just not milky enough to figure it out myself.
As a nursing mother, my experience with the milkiness of women is sticky and sweet, not smokey and wispy. I guess hard sharp things are also involved, if you count baby teeth? But otherwise everyone is mostly pretty squishy. 🙂
I’d say ‘milkiness’ is a synonym for opaqueness, as in women are difficult to understand.
I feel so silly asking this…. But how on earth do I read spoiler sections when im on my phone????
@Ash, you can copy them into a text program (notes on iPhone for example).
Ok so I used to do that but it’s not working… They come out blank!
Odd– it’s still working for me
Let me see what I can find out – sorry you’re having trouble! I’ll fix it!
That… doesn’t sound quite like bipolar disorder to me, at least re: the protagonist’s first manic episode in college. My brother has been living with the illness all his life, and while he does get grandiose and destructive and feels smarter-better-unstoppable during his manic periods, he’s never had actual full-blown delusions of being able to break laws of physics by flying or anything like that. But I am NOT an expert, so I admit that I could definitely be wrong.
@Ash, thank you for asking, as I had just assumed I didn’t have access to the spoilers on my phone. 🙂
I only have second-hand reporting by an ex, and his delusions didn’t involve physics, but yeah, at the height of a severe manic episode he had delusions regarding supernatural powers that went against some really fundamental knowledge/beliefs.
So it was a thrilling, psychological, suspenseful ‘Murder She Wrote’.
Guesses on ‘the milkiness of women’ softness? Domesticity? Nurturing tendencies? Does the context around the quote give any more clues? Honestly, it was the stretching hard things into wisps of summer evening that lost me. I mean seriously, what?
Can’t read spoiler. I’m reading on a tablet
Out of context, you could go anywhere with that one: ‘the milkiness of women’– likely, I would think it is going down the nurturing road.
I read the posts on my iPad. I copy the section of text and paste it either into the comment box here or into an email. It usually shows up fine. I did it with this post just fine.
Hi!
By milkiness of women I (Jack) meant opaqueness,as someone suggested, and the rest of the line(s) just meant he thinks women tend to hide or romanticize their feelings so they linger and haunt. He prefers dealing with things directly and settling them. Sorry to barge in, but I saw this online and thought I could clear it up. New at suspense! I am glad you’re thinking about the book though!
Susan
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I can’t suffer through more of this book so I gave up and decided the internet could tell me who did it. I didn’t even make it halfway through and had guessed the killer correctly. It wasn’t a serious guess but it turned out right. I have mighty need to get some questions answered but I guess I will just try reading it again.
I do agree that she shouldn’t have just spilled everything. This successful woman just caves once confronted? Uh … no.
Great review! I feel similar. I really enjoyed the book – especially the pacing. In some bits, I found my thoughts and mind racing in the same way that I think Dana’s is supposed to be. I too, though, was disappointed with the ending. I guessed who the killer was (although only a couple of pages before it was revealed) and the way it was all tied up in a neat little bow seemed…unrealistic maybe? Like it didn’t quite fit the manic-ness of the rest of the book.
An enjoyable book all the same 🙂
I loved this book but the killer was so not expected!! I was so shocked by it!!! But I liked the plot twist of it though