Women’s Fiction | Book Chatter

The Mad Wife
By Megan Church
Sourcebooks Landmark, Sept 2025, 352pp.

The Short of It:

Holy smokes.

The Rest of It:

My favorite thing is to read in bed, late into the night. This one night, I poorly planned my reading, scrolled up and turned the last page. What? So, I did what any reader would do. I began to frantically scroll through Hoopla and Libby to find my next read. Fast.

The Mad Wife is what I settled on. I loved the retro cover and I have a thing for domesticity and minutiae. I dove right in.

Wow. The wife in this story isn’t mad like angry, although there is plenty to be angry about. No, Lulu Mayfield has been deemed MAD by well-meaning neighbors, her own husband, and the doctors who see her. Diagnosed with Hysteria.

In the 50’s, that seemed to be a thing. Raising baby after baby with little to no sleep and still responsible for putting dinner on the table every single night, keeping the house presentable, and maintaining an attractive appearance (hair, makeup, and the like). It was the norm, and apparently women who couldn’t do it were prescribed meds to help, or even worse.

Lulu Mayfield is a likable but flawed character. She has a darling son, and a newborn baby but motherhood is never easy for her. Not like it is for the other moms in her suburban neighborhood. They seem to do it without any effort at all. Every morning she gazes at the empty home across the street, daydreaming that it’s hers and she can enjoy just a little bit of peace.

That home is not empty for long. Bitsy and Gary move in with their daughter Kathleen and things are not quite right. Bitsy is friendly, but distant. Lulu watches them when they don’t know it, and Bitsy is off in a way that’s hard for Lulu to understand. What is going on over there?

Lulu has some good friends in her circle, but no one truly understands the isolation that she feels or just how bad she’s gotten. As she struggles to do daily tasks, she fails miserably. She begins to question the point of living. Even with her children, she finds herself to be a poor example of parenting and an even worse example of a doting wife as her husband struggles with insecurities at work.

This is a marvelous read. I couldn’t help but root for Lulu. She’s so fragile and yet no one sees how despondent she is. Doctors!! Oh my gosh, male doctors are still doing this today. Dismissing serious symptoms and calling it anxiety. Lose some weight, get some exercise. Sure. When you can’t even lift your head off the pillow, how the heck are you supposed to do that?

Church’s writing stirs up empathy and rage!! I often found myself absolutely outraged at what Lulu was subjected to. Reading the book definitely reminded me of those early morning hours spent with a screaming infant and how easy it was to feel so alone in the world.

There is a twist that I will not mention. You need to discover it for yourself.

Well done. Highly recommend.

Source: Borrowed
Disclosure: This post contains Bookshop.org affiliate links.

The Waters
By Bonnie Jo Campbell
W.W. Norton & Company, October 2024, 416pp.

The Short of It:

A bit too much romance for me but brimming with strong, independent women.

The Rest of It:

On an island in the Great Massasauga Swamp–an area known as “The Waters” to the residents of nearby Whiteheart, Michigan–herbalist and eccentric Hermine “Herself” Zook has healed the local women of their ailments for generations. As stubborn as her tonics are powerful, Herself inspires reverence and fear in the people of Whiteheart, and even in her own three estranged daughters. The youngest–the beautiful, inscrutable, and lazy Rose Thorn–has left her own daughter, eleven-year-old Dorothy “Donkey” Zook, to grow up wild. – the publisher

The Waters is an interesting read. Never in my life would I have picked it up on my own. Why? Seemed a little flowery to me at first glance. A little too “woo-woo” with the lotions and potions. You know what I mean? My book club chose it for November so I found a copy and hunkered down.

Not long after starting it, I was sucked into the lives of these women. Herself, she literally calls herself this, has been providing medicinal potions to the town of Whiteheart for as long as people can remember. She lives on the island, with her girls, mainly Rose Thorn, another odd name. The island is controlled by a drawbridge of sorts to keep the men out. This becomes important later.

So here she is, Herself and Rose Thorn, living by themselves. The other siblings, Primrose and Molly have gotten themselves off the island and live fairly normal lives but their lives continue to be intertwined with their family on the island because for one reason or another, they are always called back.

Rose Thorn. The name is odd but appropriate. Beautiful like a rose but thorny, stubborn. She does what she wants. She seems to be the only thing, besides the lotions and potions tying the island back to Whiteheart. But Rose has her own demons. Raped and impregnated, she leaves the island only to return when her daughter makes her appearance. Her daughter, Donkey, AKA Dorothy. This family and their crazy names!

Donkey is a force to be reckoned with. She’s inherited some of her grandma’s talent with lotions and potions. She understands the value of those medicinal tonics, the waters, so to speak. She’s also desperate for a relationship with the father figures around her. The identity of her own father is buried in secrets.

As these women find their place on this island and outside of it, the rest of the town falls under the spell of these women and cannot stay away. They gather just outside of the island, eager to be around Rose Thorn and her desire for love becomes complicated when her soulmate finds that the obligation to his farm, outweighs actual desire.

There were times while reading this that I groaned over the romantic aspects of this novel. Was Rose Thorn really such a hot commodity that the Whiteheart men just fell to her feet even when attached to their own families? Yes, and no. They are most definitely drawn to her but loyalties come into play and it all culminates in an odd and frustrating conclusion.

I really liked walking along with Donkey, but there were times where I just wanted to shake some sense into her. All the talk about the poisonous plants, the snakes, and the like. A child growing up on an island like that is going to encounter some interesting things, and she does.

Overall, this was a very different read for me. I am not much into lotions and potions and the woo woo benefits that such things can bring, but this is a strong circle of women. I wish there was less of the romantic stuff and more of the family stuff. That would have made this a perfect read.

Recommend. Should be good for discussion.

Source: Borrowed
Disclosure: This post contains Bookshop.org affiliate links.

Chatting with friends about books and life…