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Readers of Sally Hepworth’s previous best-sellers will know that she is fluent in the ways of dysfunctional families and long-held secrets. Her seventh novel, THE YOUNGER WIFE, is all this and more. Yes, it could be rom-com, and some chapters are laugh-out-loud funny, but it also has a darker narrative throughout that edges it towards domestic noir and the family thriller genre that she really has claimed as her own. Hepworth is a great story-teller, adept at creating likeable characters and believable situations. It’s not surprising she’s sold over a million books worldwide and her 2019 novel The Mother-In-Law has been optioned for a TV series by Hollywood actress and producer, Amy Poehler.
THE YOUNGER WIFE begins strongly with a dramatic prologue. We’re at the wedding of successful surgeon Stephen Aston, a handsome man in his early sixties, and his bride Heather, fresh-faced and fake-tanned, and just half his age. The groom’s daughters, Rachel and Tully, are around the same age as their new step-mum. We’re unsure as to the identity of the narrator at this stage, except that she is “a woman of a certain age; for years I’ve been bland and forgettable.”
The wedding proceeds as one would expect until the couple adjourn to sign the marriage register. The guests hear a scream and “a dense, meaty thud.” Moments later, the Wedding Celebrant reappears with blood splattered over her smart pant-suit.
This is a great beginning – we don’t know who has been hurt, or indeed murdered, or by whom. The story then jumps back in time to one year earlier. Each subsequent mini-chapter, just a couple of pages each, is told from a different point-of-view. These are mainly the two daughters and the new wife; to say more here would be a spoiler. The story is set in Melbourne, Hepworth’s home town, but the place is unimportant; these streets, these people, could be in the suburbs of any big city.
THE YOUNGER WIFE is a novel that goes beyond the usual domestic romp. The main characters are all flawed in different ways and are, to a large extent, shaped by events in the past. Old sins do indeed cast long shadows, as they say. Hepworth has a disciplined hand, revealing their secrets slowly so we only gradually come to understand their actions and motivations, their fears and their foibles.
I’m sure everyone will find moments of resonance as they read THE YOUNGER WIFE because we all have our times of self-doubt, and all live with our own flaws and inconsistencies. There’s humour and pathos too as we share their angst. Why did their mum have an old pink hot water bottle hidden away at the back of the wardrobe that was stuffed with cash?
The really dark undercurrent in THE YOUNGER WIFE comes from the tendency of each person to ignore the things they would rather not acknowledge. How do you reconcile actions that seem so out-of-character as to make you doubt what you saw and heard?
I loved these characters and was absorbed from the first page to the last. It presented the ultimate conundrum of the good book – I needed to get to the end and find out what happened, but it was so much fun that I didn’t want it to end. Highly recommended!
THE YOUNGER WIFE by Sally Hepworth
Pan Macmillan 2021
https://www.panmacmillan.com.au/9781760987220/the-younger-wife/
