The Husband's Secret

When I first picked up this novel it immediately struck me as another one of those "old lady fiction" books that I have come to despise. As it continued I became distracted by watching episodes of Revenge on Netflix and Law and Order: SVU on TV. When I finally urged myself to re-engage with the book I finally started to think "wow this is good." Now I must say that this book is not just "good," but this book is excellent. 

"There are so many secrets about our lives we'll never know." But sometimes some secrets are revealed that change our paths forever. The book starts with story lines attached to three different main women. We have Cecilia Fitzgerald whose husband has a secret that is hidden in a sealed letter from long ago. The Berlin Wall (a topic that her middle daughter is obsessed with) causes her to hunt around in the attic for a piece of it that she gathered long ago to give to her child as a keepsake. She bumps some old shoe boxes and discovers this letter - to her, to be opened after her husband's death. The only problem here is that her husband isn't yet dead. His secret causes connections to other families dealing with their own secrets. There's Tess, whose brain can't catch up to her new reality - that her best friend and cousin, Felicity, wants to have an affair with Tess's husband, Will. And Will is reluctantly bringing this secret love affair to Tess's un-wanting attention. Finally there is Rachel, whose daughter was murdered years ago. 

The Berlin Wall caused all of the events in the book to unravel. It all seems to go awry with the finding and subsequent opening of that letter. Esther, Cecilia's formerly Titanic-obsessed, but now Berlin-obsessed daughter, constantly points out to her mother the craziness of the whole situation. "Imagine, Mum, if we kids were visiting Grandma in West Berlin for the weekend when the wall went up, and you and Dad were stuck in East Berlin. You'd have to say to us, 'Stay at Grandma's place, kids! Don't come back! For your freedom!" She admonishes to her mother that "it's history," and her mother is left imaging herself in Berlin, separated from her children by a wall. Cecilia is the Queen of her daughter's catholic school, however, and a social-scene master. Her own personal wall has not yet come down, but with the reading of her husband's secret she will find that her wall slowly starts to crumble, and with her own freedom there will be pain and suffering and unimaginable hatred. 

Tess, with the news of her family's infidelity, moves from Melbourne, Australia to Sydney and takes her son along with her. The wall that separates her and her son from her husband is a geographic one, in which only time will close the gap. 

And Rachel, a woman whose lost daughter has forever caused her to pin her eyes upon one suspected man as the murderer has no idea that the truth behind her daughter's death is one that she never would have considered, again until it's too late. As the secrets come spilling out, the book becomes wildly entertaining and morosely realistic. That being said, out of all the books I've read lately this would probably be the happiest. I would not say that The Husband's Secret is a lighthearted read, but is infinitely lighter than some of the other heavy mysteries I've been unpacking. 

At first when the letter that starts the plot rolling was opened I was upset. Beforehand I had had an "aha!" moment where I thought I knew exactly what information that letter would contain. Considering everyone's lives in this book are connected, I figured it out quickly and was not wrong. I was disappointed that I what I thought was the big reveal, the climax of the story, was actually a letdown. It was all revealed too easily, and the truth wasn't grisly enough for my darker hungers. I still appreciated, however, that it happened in the middle of the book so we had somewhere to go. 

As we hear snippets of the Berlin Wall we are also privy to hear some hints and facets of the past that help us figure out the present. All at once this book can be just sad. Horrible, heavy, distraught, sad. Then other times the book makes me feel so happy, and guilty at being happy, that I find myself physically feeling the sensation of what it is to smile. 

In the midst of her life unraveling, the once perfect and poised Cecilia Fitzgerald sits down with her daughter to watch footage of the Berlin Wall coming down, and she cries. When asked why she's crying, she replies "Because they're so happy." And here we see more of the vulnerability of this once proud and perfect woman. "Because they endured this unacceptable thing. Because that woman probably thought, like so many people had, that the Wall would eventually come down, but not in their lifetimes, and that she would never see this day, and yet she had, and now she was dancing." Sometimes it's a good thing that walls come down, and other times it's terrifying and shatters the surreal sense of protection we all once thought we had. 

What this book teaches us is that we all must pay the price for our sins, but sometimes that payment is exacted later on in life when we're not expecting it. It ruins us. In moments like these we use our "crisp, crunchy words" all lovely and fresh: shit, fuck, damn. "This was how it could be done. This was how you lived with a terrible secret. You just did it. You pretended everything was fine. You ignored the deep, cramplike pain in your stomach. You somehow anesthetized yourself so that nothing felt that bad, but nothing felt that good either." 

This book isn't just about our secrets and our walls, our due payments and our sick sense of justice. This is about those abstract ideas of life, love, and relationships. Those "fun flings where nobody got hurt;" those social anxieties that alienate us from people who only want to love us; that healing of relationships that were worn thin from years of neglect, or that were just always tattered and torn to begin with, and that warm feeling that rushes through your veins when all is well. The love of a grandmother toward her grandchild, and the relationship between women - a mother and a daughter, or a girl and her cousin. Tess at one point wonders if her husband fell in love with another women because of her basic personality. Her social anxiety - "Wasn't there something close off, even small-minded and mean, about the way she cut herself off from people, ducking down behind the convenient wall of her shyness, her social anxiety?" I'm like Tess in that I have a horrible social anxiety, and sickeningly I feel relief when friends finally stop calling ... although the good friends never do stop. But Tess's wall of anxiety, and Rachel's wall of emptiness, and Cecilia's wall of perfection ... in the end they all must come tumbling down and the women must embrace the 'freedom' that brings whether they want to or not. 

"Did you know that some people wish the Berlin Wall had never come down? ... That's weird, isn't it? Why would you want to be stuck behind a wall?" 

"Marriage was a form of insanity; love hovering permanently on the edge of aggravation." The words in Moriarty's novel are so rich that I can taste them on my tongue as I read. Her characters are so identifiable ... by this I mean that I can commiserate with them so easily. I can feel for them, with them, and hide behind my own wall as I watch what happens when theirs crumble. When Rachel's wall comes down she must suffer the consequences, as they all must do. 

Again this novel is not just good; it is excellent. My reactions were constantly visceral - my coarse emotions come clawing to the surface with Moriarty's well-connected characters and the damaging effects of karma. I felt so connected to Tess and the fears she faced and the constant crippling shyness she felt in the simplest of situations. I admired and admonished Cecilia and her plight, and felt horribly for Rachel, but God did I just want the woman to move on. But put quite eloquently, "You could try as hard as you could to imagine someone else's tragedy - drowning in icy waters, living in a city split by a wall - but nothing truly hurts until happens to you."

I loved this novel, and I must thank the author, Liane Moriarty, for finally giving me the book I wanted. She gave me everything I wanted in a book. A hint of a climax, then a rise to an even greater climax, and then just enough of the falling action to make the ending completely worth it all. And she revealed the secrets I didn't know I was dying to know. In the epilogue she tells us that "None of us ever know all the possible courses our lives could have and maybe should have taken. It's probably just as well. Some secrets are meant to stay secret forever. Just ask Pandora." Remember, no one ever told Pandora not to open the "box." Some books have failed me in giving me the secrets I so often crave like a maniacal addict, but this book did. Thank you, thank you, and thank you for a truly delectable read. 

P.S. If you read my blog for whatever reason, but tend to ignore my recommendations for reading for whatever reason ... please listen to me on this one and pick up The Husband's Secret. I only wish I would have read it in one sitting. Likewise if you know of any books similar to this one - send them my way. I always love to add to my reading piles.