HOW TO BE A GOOD WIFE

Narrator Susan Lyons delivers Chapman's psychological thriller with just the right touches of uncertainty and confusion. Although her much older husband insists that Marta take her medications, she has secretly stopped taking them. As a result, her behavior has become erratic. She's doing things that are completely out of character, baffling everyone around her, and even herself. (She finds cigarettes in her purse, and she doesn't smoke.) Although the setting remains unnamed, Lyons describes its icy cold with chilling clarity, successfully evoking the bleak Scandinavian landscape with its stark whiteness. As Marta's suppressed memories begin to emerge, Lyons reflects Marta's mental disintegration, providing an appropriately hesitant, choppy inner-dialogue that suggests a nightmarish, hallucinatory atmosphere. A fine performance of a strong first novel. S.J.H. © AudioFile 2013, Portland, Maine [Published: DECEMBER 2013]