A journalist's suspicions about a homemaking influencer's squeaky-clean, perfectly curated image don't even begin to approach the sinister reality in the intense, claustrophobic horror novel Trad Wife. Three-time Bram Stoker Award-winner Sarah Langan (Good Neighbors) here blends existential dread with the dark truth of traditional gender roles.
Journalist Jenny Kaplan earned her 15 minutes of fame with a viral autobiographical essay about her abortion and her breakup with her mentally ill boyfriend. The moment of triumph soured quickly when a group calling themselves the Brotherhood of the American Agenda began harassing and protesting her, and Jenny's magazine fired her amid the backlash. Her editor offers her a freelance gig when popular "Trad Wife" influencer Mia Wright requests Jenny visit Black Swan Farm, Mia's husband's family land, and write a feature.
Mia styles herself as "a traditional Depression-era wife from the 1930s: strong, capable, self-sacrificing." Jenny considers trad wives "pod people," but she can't resist the opportunity to unravel Mia's allure, the strangeness of Black Swan, or the mystery of nearby Sylvan Village, known for its occasional "magic hour" of luminous yellow fog. Soon she realizes something hungry slithers through this haven of home-cooked meals and well-behaved children.
Langan's modern-day gothic narrative seethes with taut menace and scathing critiques of social media subterfuge and the pressure on women to meet a moving-target definition of perfection. Each step of Jenny's way is laced with an escalating loss of identity and bodily autonomy. A subtle callback to Charlotte Perkins Gilman's classic short horror story "The Yellow Wallpaper" cements the feminist lineage of this smart, chilling look at a polarizing trend. --Jaclyn Fulwood, blogger at Infinite Reads