Novel About My Wife

Description

Tom Stone is madly in love with his wife Ann. Pushing forty and expecting their first child, they buy a semi-derelict house in Hackney. Despite their spiralling money troubles, they believe this is their settled future. But Ann becomes convinced she's being shadowed by a homeless man whose presence seems like a terrible omen. As their child grows, Ann's behaviour becomes increasingly erratic, feverish and disturbed. On the verge of losing everything, Tom makes a decision that he hopes will save their lives. Novel About My Wife is a taut, sensuous and chilling portrait of a marriage beset by paranoia and obsession.

Promotion info

For fans of Ian McEwan, Joanna Briscoe, Zoe Heller, Julie Myerson and Rachel Cusk Emily Perkins's collection of short stories won the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize and was shortlisted for the John Lewellyn Rhys Prize Shortlisted for The Believer Book Award 2008

Awards

Winner of Montana New Zealand Book Awards: Fiction Category 2009.

Reviews

'Novel About My Wife is the fascinating portrait of a marriage, in all its labyrinthine complexity and tenderness. A beautiful, shocking book, it had me gripped from its very first sentence' Maggie O'Farrell 'A frightening tale of delusion ... fast and inexorable ... Perkins draws out the emotional tension and the thematic parallels while keeping the action tight and gripping' Sunday Times '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 'Chilling ... One of the year's most intimate novels' Time Out

Author description

Emily Perkins was born in 1970. She is the author of Not Her Real Name, a collection of short stories which won the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize and was shortlisted for the John Lewellyn Rhys Prize, and the novels Leave Before You Go and The New Girl. She lives in New Zealand.