Wife

Charlotte Mendelson’s previous novel, The Exhibitionist, was longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction and was Novel of the Year 2022 in The Times, as well as a book of the year in The Guardian and Good Housekeeping. Her other novels include Almost English, which was longlisted for both the Man Booker and the Women’s Prize for Fiction; When We Were Bad, which was shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction and was a book of the year in The Observer, The Guardian, The Sunday Times, The New Statesman and The Spectator; and Daughters of Jerusalem, which won both the Somerset Maugham Award and the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize. Wife is her sixth novel.

Poleaxed after finishing this. Charlotte Mendelson at her soul-searing best. Narcissistic monsters and suffocating families are quite the specialty of hers, but Wife is just unbearably brilliant