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 (Pam Kowolski Is a Monster!; 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, her breakup with her mentally ill boyfriend, and his subsequent theft of all her possessions. The moment of triumph soured quickly when a group calling themselves the Brotherhood of the American Agenda began harassing and protesting her online. Jenny's magazine fired her amid the backlash, leaving her unemployed when she already felt "an invisible goblin was chewing the string of her life, digesting it, leaving a dirty package behind." Her editor offers her a "soft landing" in freelance gig form when popular "Trad Wife" influencer Mia Wright requests Jenny visit her farm and write a feature.
Mia styles herself as "a traditional Depression-era wife from the 1930s: strong, capable, self-sacrificing." Jenny, who considers trad wives "pod people," spots something odd about Mia's supposedly authentic, relatable videos: her mistakes and accidents seem intentional. In person, Mia is warm and welcoming while simultaneously dodging Jenny's questions about her income and her pyramid-shaped "ambassador" program, which enlists her followers in selling home and beauty products from Black Swan Farm, Mia's husband's family land. Mia responds to Jenny's transparent skepticism by inviting her to stay for a week at Black Swan and have her mind changed. Jenny 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, but is Mia a part of the darkness, or a victim desperate for Jenny's help?
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
Shelf Talker: A trad wife influencer's squeaky-clean public image hides a secret world of suffocating terror in this intense, claustrophobic horror novel.