“THE SILENT WIFE” by A.S.A. Harrison

Any relationship/ marriage has multiple facets, and the writer A.S.A. Harrison (who died before her first novel “A silent wife” was published) knew very well to show it to us.

I must confess that when I read the book in 2013, I was almost the same age as Jodi (Todd’s partner), and I was on her team all the way.
But now, six years later, and me being very close to fifty years old, I understand Todd as well. And I know how easy it is to break up a relationship/ marriage if the partners are not speaking honestly.

From my friend, who is a psychiatrist, I have learned that we all play some roles in a relationship/ marriage, therefore what we tell each other are half-truth lines.

HER = Jodi

“At forty-five, Jodi still sees herself as a young woman. She does not have her eye on the future but lives very much in the moment, keeping her focus on the everyday.
She assumes, without having thought about it, that things will go on indefinitely in their imperfect yet entirely acceptable way.”

“A cheater remains a cheater in the same way an optimist remains an optimist.”

“It simply doesn’t matter that time and time again he gives the game away, because he knows and she knows that he’s a cheater, and he knows that she knows, but the point is that the pretense, the all-important pretense must be maintained, the illusion that everything is fine and nothing is the matter.
As long as the facts are not openly declared, as long as he talks to her in euphemisms and circumlocutions, as long as things are functioning smoothly and a surface calm prevails, they can go on living their lives, it being a known fact that a life well lived amounts to a series of compromises based on the acceptance of those around you with their individual needs and idiosyncrasies, which can’t always be tailored to one’s liking or constrained to fit conservative social norms.”

HIM = Todd

“In the short span of time that he’s known her (i.e., Natasha), she’s given him back his life. That’s what he owes her, the gift of life, as found in the feelings that makes a man human–not just love but greed, lust, desire… the whole teeming, disruptive lot.”

“Women like him. They like him because he knows how to look after them. He looks after Natasha, but there’s a catch with Natasha. She makes him conscious of his aging body and flagging vitality. Not because of anything she says or does; only because she’s young and desirable and insatiable.”

“Natasha is in her senior year and will graduate in the spring with a BA in art history. She hasn’t thought about a career; what she would like to do is get married and start a family. Apropos of this she has told him that he’d make an excellent father. He’s encouraged by what this implies–that she’s not about to dump him for a younger man–but hasn’t thought about the future except to admit to himself that what he has with Natasha is different, not what you’d call a fling.”

“He wished she (Natasha) would not bring Jodi into it. His life with Jodi belongs to a realm that has nothing to do with her, a parallel universe where things run smoothly and will go on doing so, where blameless years stretch sweetly into the past and comfortably into the future.”

“One thing he puts up with Jodi is the fact that she has a string of degrees. He doesn’t mind her being brainy–what gets him is the ribbing he has to take from the boys, who like to carry on about Jodi being a cut above him.”

Publisher: Penguin Books, 2013