BOOK REVIEW | TRAD WIFE | SARAH LANGAN

 

BOOK REVIEW | TRAD WIFE | SARAH LANGAN

DESCRIPTION

Every day, millions watch Mia Wright, the "trad wife" queen, on her idyllic 300-acre farm. With her handsome husband, seven perfect children, and a life of from-scratch meals, she's an icon of modern femininity. But behind every perfect image is a lie.

Desperate to save her tarnished career, journalist Jenny Kaplan arrives at Black Swan Farm to profile Mia. Jenny is ready to write a scathing exposé, determined to uncover the deception behind Mia's curated life.

But there's something wrong at the farmhouse.

It slithers through Jenny's dreams when the children sing strange nursery rhymes at night. She's losing time. She's losing her hair. She starts to worry that she's losing her mind.

There is a horror at the heart of Black Swan, and it's waiting just for Jenny.

REVIEW

Scratch beneath the surface of any seemingly perfect life and the cracks soon begin to show. In Trad Wife, Sarah Langan peels back the veneer of perfection to reveal something far more insidious lurking beneath.

Finding herself vilified for writing a journalistic piece chronicling the difficulties she has overcome in her life, Jenny Kaplan is sent to Black Swan Farm to investigate viral trad-wife supremo Mia Wright, who seems to have the superhuman ability to manage a gaggle of children, grow and make all her own food, build a thriving business, and worship the ground her husband walks on.

Jenny knows there is a story here, it’s just not the one she expects.

Langan is an expert at finding monsters in the everyday, uncovering horror in the familiar and mundane. In Trad Wife, her scrutiny moves to the phenomenon of the trad-wife movement.

Trad Wife is a masterclass in slow, deliberate creeping dread, with seeds planted early in the story that build towards a horror that feels inescapable.

Langan does this by cleverly deceiving the reader. As Jenny begins to investigate Mia’s life and business, they begin to form a grudging respect for each other, even a friendship of sorts, as Jenny falls into the hubbub of rural life. Without giving too much away, it is this gradual erosion of Jenny’s perception that forms the basis of the terror.

Using an accessible first-person style, Langan carefully draws the reader into the central conceit of the story. While some may experience it as a slow burn, it is in fact structurally building the narrative.

While some readers may be tempted to lambast the trad-wife movement, Langan instead focuses on the power of social media and how ideas can influence and infect the psyche.

And once Langan begins to peel back the surface, it becomes difficult to trust that anything was ever solid to begin with.

Sarah Langan’s Trad Wife is a masterclass in slow burn horror that gently gnaws its way under the skin.