Emily Perkins, a New Zealand novelist, has written four four highly regarded and awarded books, but I’d never heard of her until one of those ‘the books I loved in 2008′ newspaper round-ups raved about the latest, Novel About My Wife. In a virtuoso performance, Perkins inhabits, as if male herself, the intense persona of Tom Stone, a forty-something scriptwriter in love with his ravishing wife Ann and their new, shambolic house in the London suburb of Hackney. The writing is claustrophobically close, full of Tom’s all-too-human passions and foibles, a mixture of joy and depression, love and envy. From the opening pages, we find ourselves enmeshed in Tom’s need to explain what happened with his mysterious Ann. For after Ann reports that she is being stalked by a homeless man, the couple’s house and neighbouring streets acquire a growing sense of menace. When Ann gets pregnant, her dreads and fears grow, infecting Tom until he, too, is paralzyed by paranoia. I read this brooding, subtle novel fast, needing to find out what happens and why.
Brilliant on every page, memorable in impact, Novel About My Wife deserves an award or two.