Synopsis
At the heart of The Husband’s Secret is a letter that’s not meant to be read
My darling Cecilia, if you’re reading this, then I’ve died...
Imagine
that your husband wrote you a letter, to be opened after his death.
Imagine, too, that the letter contains his deepest, darkest
secret—something with the potential to destroy not just the life you
built together, but the lives of others as well. Imagine, then, that you
stumble across that letter while your husband is still very much alive.
. . .
Cecilia Fitzpatrick has achieved it all—she’s an incredibly
successful businesswoman, a pillar of her small community, and a devoted
wife and mother. Her life is as orderly and spotless as her home. But
that letter is about to change everything, and not just for her: Rachel
and Tess barely know Cecilia—or each other—but they too are about to
feel the earth-shattering repercussions of her husband’s secret.
Acclaimed
author Liane Moriarty has written a gripping, thought-provoking novel
about how well it is really possible to know our spouses—and,
ultimately, ourselves.
Hardcover, 396 pages
Published July 30th 2013 by G.P. Putnam's Sons (first published 2013)
ISBN 0399159347 (ISBN13: 9780399159343)
About the Author
Liane was born on a beautiful
November day in 1966 in Sydney. A few hours after she was born, she
smiled directly at her father through the nursery glass window, which is
remarkable, seeing as most babies can’t even focus their eyes at that
age.
Her first word was ‘glug’. This was faithfully recorded in
the baby book kept by her mother. (As the eldest of six children, Liane
was the only one to get a baby book so she likes to refer to it often.)
As
a child, she loved to read, so much so that school friends would
cruelly hide their books when she came to play. She still doesn’t know
how to go to sleep at night without first reading a novel for a very
long time in a very hot bath.
She can’t remember the first story
she ever wrote, but she does remember her first publishing deal. Her
father ‘commissioned’ her to write a novel for him and paid her an
advance of $1.00. She wrote a three volume epic called, ‘The Mystery of
Dead Man’s Island’
After leaving school, Liane began a career in
advertising and marketing. She became quite corporate for a while and
wore suits and worried a lot about the size of her office. She
eventually left her position as marketing manager of a legal publishing
company to run her own (not especially successful) business called The
Little Ad Agency. After that she worked as (a more successful,
thankfully) freelance advertising copywriter, writing everything from
websites and TV commercials to the back of the Sultana Bran box.
She
also wrote short stories and many first chapters of novels that didn’t
go any further. The problem was that she didn’t actually believe that
real people had novels published. Then one day she found out that they
did, when her younger sister Jaclyn Moriarty called to say that her (brilliant, hilarious, award-winning) novel, Feeling Sorry for Celia was about to be published.
In a fever of sibling rivalry, Liane rushed to the computer and wrote a
children’s book called The Animal Olympics, which went on to be
enthusiastically rejected by every publisher in Australia.
She
calmed down and enrolled in a Masters degree at Macquarie University in
Sydney. As part of that degree, she wrote her first novel, Three Wishes.
It was accepted by the lovely people at Pan Macmillan and went on to be
published around the world. (Her latest books are published by the
equally lovely people at Penguin in both the US and the UK)
Since then she has written two more novels for adults, as well as a series of books for children.
Liane
is now a full-time author. She lives in Sydney with her husband, her
new baby daughter Anna, and her son George, who likes to sit on her lap
while she works, helpfully smashing his fist against the keyboard and
suggesting that she might prefer to be watching the Wiggles instead.
Once
upon a time she went heli-skiing and skydiving* and scuba diving. These
days she goes to the park and ‘Gymbaroo’ and sings ‘I’m a Little Cuckoo
Clock’ at swimming lessons. She has discovered that the adrenaline
burst you experience from jumping out of a plane is remarkably similar
to the one you get when your toddler makes a run for it in a busy car
park.
Check out the author's website
Like the author on Facebook
My Thoughts
It was all because of the Berlin Wall.
A small town. One wife confronted with the end of her marriage, another confronted by a husband's deep secret. Another reminisces about her marriage before her husband's death years earlier and the loss of their daughter.
My final word: I just don't know what it was about this book. I liked the concept, the characters were okay, development was okay-- but there was just something about it that I found a little boring and maybe a little slow. I initially had trouble keeping track of the characters. I could keep track of the three main women, but when they would start out talking about other characters, it would take me a minute to figure out which woman those characters were associated with, in order to understand whose perspective we were following this chapter. Overall the book was "okay to good".
Buy Now:
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IndieBound
My Rating:
The Cerebral Girl is a forty-something blogger just digging her way out from under a mountain of books in the deep south of Florida.
This book was the November 2015 selection for the Cape Coral Bookies.
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