How to Be a Good Wife

In the tradition of Emma Donoghue's Room and S.J. Watson’s Before I Go to Sleep, a haunting literary debut about a woman who begins having visions that make her question everything she knows

Marta and Hector have been married for a long time. Through the good and bad; through raising a son and sending him off to life after university. So long, in fact, that Marta finds it difficult to remember her life before Hector. He has always taken care of her, and she has always done everything she can to be a good wife—as advised by a dog-eared manual given to her by Hector’s aloof mother on their wedding day.

But now, something is changing. Small things seem off. A flash of movement in the corner of her eye, elapsed moments that she can’t recall. Visions of a blonde girl in the darkness that only Marta can see. Perhaps she is starting to remember—or perhaps her mind is playing tricks on her. As Marta’s visions persist and her reality grows more disjointed, it’s unclear if the danger lies in the world around her, or in Marta herself. The girl is growing more real every day, and she wants something.

EMMA J. CHAPMAN was born in 1985 and grew up in Manchester, England. She studied English Literature at the University of Edinburgh, followed by a Masters in Creative Writing at Royal Holloway, University of London. After university, she travelled solo in Scandinavia, where she learned to camp, bathe in fjords, and carry everything she needed. She is currently living in Perth, Western Australia. How to Be a Good Wife is her first novel.

On the surface the book is a highly competent chiller, but beneath, like a silent, bolted . . . room, there’s a much bigger story about the nature of feminine experience. An accomplished debut.”—Hilary Mantel, New York Times bestselling author of Wolf Hall

“How to Be a Good Wife is at once claustrophobic, startling and hauntingly beautiful. It’s that amazing, awful kind of book that will stay with you long after you wish it would let you go.”—Liza Klaussmann, author of Tigers in Red Weather

“A compelling, twisty tale of deception and distrust. Beautifully written, and very clever.”—Elizabeth Haynes, author of Into the Darkest Corner