The Husband’s Secret
(Contains spoilers)
I feel like I haven’t read in ages! All the books at my local flea market were free of charge so I decided to take this one with me. The Husband’s Secret is unusual book for me because it’s only the second one that I’ve read in English (text books or scientific articles/ papers don’t count!) since I’m not native English speaker. The first book that I read in English was actually John Green’s The Fault in Our Stars and I was around 15–16 years old. At the time I spend my summer vacation working in a small youth center which also had a café that I was responsible of. I made coffee and small (ready-made) pastries, watered the plants, tidied the kitchen a bit, and put the patio furniture outside and finally moved them back inside at the end of the day without anyone using them. On the best days I had five customers in total, so I spend most of my days reading and watching tv. Actually sounds like a dream job.
The Husband’s Secret is a 2013 published thriller novel by Australian author Liane Moriarty. The milieu of the book is also based on Australia, and more specifically Sydney and Melbourne. It was a nice change from the US or Britain based books that I’ve been reading, even though it had similar industrial western country elements in it. A film adaptation of the same name, which was supposed to feature Blake Lively as a main character, was under development in 2017 but after that there hasn’t been current updates. I guess they put it on hold or cancelled entirely.
The Husband’s Secret follows three families during the Easter week, and the structure of the book is built according to it. We are first introduced to Cecilia Fitzpatrick, who lives in Sydney’s suburbia with her husband John-Paul and their three daughters, Isobel, Esther and Polly. Cecilia is mainly a homemaker but gets an additional income from Tupperware containers that she sells to other suburbia wives at the parties she hosts. Her life seems as organized and happy as it gets until one day she finds concerning letter from her husband while searching something from the attic — “to be opened only in the event of my death”.
The second family consists of Tess O’Leary, her husband Will, and their son Liam who all live in Melbourne. Together Tess, Will and Tess’ cousin Felicity have a company where Tess is the business manager, Will the creative director, and Felicity the art director. Tess is the front of the company and interacts with all the new and old clients, which means that Will and Felicity spend a lot of time just the two of them. One day Will and Felicity confess to Tess that they are in love with each other, which causes Tess to move temporarily to her mother’s house to Sydney with Liam. She then enrolls Liam to St. Angela Catholic elementary school where the Fitzpatrick girls also attend.
The third family is the family of Rachel Growley’s. Rachel also lives in Sydney and works as a school secretory in St. Angela. Her son Rob, his wife Laurie, and their two-year-old son Jacob, live in the same city as her, but they suddenly announce that they are moving to New York because of a job offer that Laurie got. This crushes Rachel because she’s extremely close and devoted to Jacob, and secretly wishes that Rob and Laurie would consider having another baby. Rachel also had a daughter, Janie, but she was murdered when she was 20 years old, and the killer never got caught. Rachel’s husband, Ed, the father of Rob and Janie, also passed away soon after Janie’s death.
At first it was hard to remember all the characters, and to understand how they are associate with each other. I would say that it was quite fun to try to put the pieces together. Slowly it got more and more clear that the connecting point is the city that they live in. They all have somewhat a past with each other because they attended the same school. St. Angela’s current PE teacher, Connor Whitby, is Tess’ ex-boyfriend, Rachel’s co-worker, and he also had a relationship with Rachel’s daughter Janie. Connor was actually the last person to see Janie alive, and because of that, Rachel believes he’s guilty for the murder three decades ago.
There were another connecting points throughout the story. Cecilia’s daughter Esther likes to research events and things around the world, and obsess about them until she even bores her parents with the talking. The previous interests have been dinosaurs and Titanic, and the current one is Berlin’s Wall which recurs frequently to the story. It was actually the real reason why Cecilia found John-Paul’s letter at the attic — she was looking for a souvenir from her travels, a piece of Berlin’s Wall, to give to Esther. In addition, all the children were obsessed with the Biggest Looser tv-show. Overall the concept of weight was mentioned a lot in the book — especially with Tess’ cousin Felicity. She used to be over-weight, and according to Tess “morbidly obese”. Tess felt prettier when she was around Felicity which just shows how fragile Tess’ own self-esteem was and still is. In every occasion Tess would mention how her “fat cousin” did this and that, how under all the fat was actually a gorgeous woman. She made it feel like it was her only personality trait. At the weight Felicity was earlier, she wouldn’t attract anyone, and she was going to end up alone. The change should start with inside first, not caused by the external pressures.
This book actually had a lot of problematic characters. Tess, Rachel, Will, Felicity, John-Paul.. basically everyone else besides the children. Tess with her “putting others down to lift herself up” -attitude, and overall because of the weird relationship she had with Felicity. Ever since they were young they did everything together and shared everything (so why not Will as well). Will and Felicity with their betrayal. Tess, again, when she cheated Will with her ex-boyfriend, Connor, and didn’t tell him anything, even though there’s a possibility that he’s the father of Tess’ new baby. Rachel with all the misogyny thoughts. She couldn’t believe that Laurie, a woman, didn’t want anymore children, or that she would return to work after three months of maternity leave — she must care more about her work than Liam. Rachel ignoring her other child, Rob, when Janie died, and ultimately alienating him. Rachel when hitting Polly with her car, because she was trying to hit Connor, the man she believed to be responsible for Janie’s death, and just finding moments after that the murderer wasn’t even him. And finally John-Paul for obvious reasons.
I liked the ending because the narrative changed from third person to all knowing. We, as readers, got to know everything while the characters of the book stayed blissful. Polly Fitzpatrick would’ve become a great tennis player if she hadn’t lost her arm in the accident. Connor had actually heard Polly yelling at him before she followed him on the road, and drove her bike in front of Rachel’s car. He felt so guilty that the therapy sessions he took, paid the therapist’s daughter through private school. Tess didn’t find out if the father of her daughter is Will or Connor, but at a Christmas dinner when the daughter tells everyone that she wants to become a PE teacher, her grandma almost chokes on the turkey. John-Paul never gets to know that Janie had genetic disorder, Marfan syndrome, which caused her shortness of breath, poor circulation, and a racing heartbeat. She didn’t die due to asphyxiation, because of the choking, but suffered from aortic aneurysm. If Janie hadn’t died, she would’ve married Connor, and divorced him not long after. If John-Paul had attacked any other girl, he would have stopped the choking sooner, and the girl would’ve survived. He would’ve met Janie at a party just before he was introduced to Cecilia. And that’s on butterfly effect.
4/5
