Rating:  ☆☆☆☆

Recommended by:

Author:   A.S.A. Harrison

Genre:  Fiction, Mystery, Thriller, Suspense

326 pages, published June 25, 2013

Reading Format:  Book

Summary

The Silent Wife is a psychological thriller about a marriage that is at risk and how far one woman will go to keep what she believes to be rightfully hers.

Quotes 

“Life has a way of taking its toll on the person you thought you were.”

 

“Other people are not here to fulfill our needs or meet our expectations, nor will they always treat us well. Failure to accept this will generate feelings of anger and resentment. Peace of mind comes with taking people as they are and emphasizing the positive.”

 

“In asserting that people don’t change, what she means is that they don’t change for the better. Whereas changing for the worse, that goes without saying.”

 

“She didn’t know then that life has a way of backing you into a corner. You make your choices when you’re far too young to understand their implications, and with each choice you make the field of possibility narrows. You choose a career and other careers are lost to you. You choose a mate and commit to loving no other.”

 

“Basic personality traits develop early in life and over time become inviolable, hardwired. Most people learn little from experience, rarely thinking of adjusting their behavior, see problems as emanating from those around them, and keep on doing what they do in spite of everything, for better or worse.”

 

“We live alone in our cluttered psyches, possessed by our entrenched beliefs, our fatuous desires, our endless contradictions – and like it or not we have to put up with this in one another.  Do you want your man to be a man or do you want to turn him into a pussy? Don’t think you can have it both ways.”

 

“You will not be the same person coming out of a relationship as you were going into it.”

 

“Even if you forget that´s not the same as if it never happened. The slate is not entirely wiped clean; you can´t reclaim the person you were beforehand; your state of innocence is not there to be retrieved.”

 

“It’s money not education that’s the holy grail in America.”

 

“The woman who refuses to object, who doesn’t yell and scream—there’s strength in that, and power. The way she overrides sentiment, won’t enter into blaming or bickering, never gives him an opening, doesn’t allow him to turn it back on her. She knows that her refusal leaves him alone with his choices.”

 

“Acceptance is supposed to be a good thing – Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change. Also compromise, as every couples therapist will tell you. But the cost was high – the damping of expectation, the dwindling of spirit, the resignation that comes to replace enthusiasm, the cynicism that supplants hope. The mouldering that goes unnoticed and unchecked.”

 

“Time hangs suspended, and yet it’s about to end. Death should be a seduction, not a rape. Given one more minute he could do so much. Even the guilty are allowed to make a phone call, send a message. How alive he feels, how brightly he shines, like a lit fuse, a firecracker about to go off. What he wouldn’t give for a minute more, just one ordinary minute tacked crudely onto the end of his life.”

 

“As for herself, every morning on waking she gives thanks to the God she doesn’t disbelieve in. Although she can’t credit him with saving her, she needs this outlet for her gratitude.” 

My Take

Much in the same vein as Gone Girl and The Girl on the Train, The Silent Wife was a page turner that I couldn’t put down.  Interesting insights into a long term marriage on the rocks, with some twists and turns that kept me engaged.  Great vacation read.