The Husband’s Secret
By Books That Inspire / December 2, 2017 / 3 Comments / Audio Books
“My darling Cecilia, if you’re reading this, then I’ve died….”
Imagine that your husband wrote you a letter, to be opened after his death. Imagine, too, that the letter contains his deepest, darkest secret – something with the potential to destroy not just the life you built together, but the lives of others as well. Imagine, then, that you stumble across that letter while your husband is still very much alive….
Cecilia Fitzpatrick has achieved it all – she’s an incredibly successful businesswoman, a pillar of her small community, and a devoted wife and mother. Her life is as orderly and spotless as her home. But that letter is about to change everything, and not just for her: Rachel and Tess barely know Cecilia – or each other – but they too are about to feel the earth-shattering repercussions of her husband’s secret.
Acclaimed author Liane Moriarty has written a gripping, thought-provoking novel about how well it is really possible to know our spouses – and, ultimately, ourselves.
3 thoughts on "The Husband’s Secret"
Leave a Reply Cancel reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
Page Turner The book reminds me of a piece of rope composed of three strands. It begins with what appear to be three unrelated stories, but of course the reader knows they have to be related. One story, and perhaps the most important one, focuses on a middle-aged woman named Cecilia who discovers an old envelope sealed with aging tape among her husband’s tax records in the attic. It is addressed to her, but it is supposed to be opened only in case of his death.Â
Love and pain, interwoven It took me a little while to engage. The first few chapters throw a lot of apparently unconnected characters at you: Cecilia and Rachel and Tess and Janie and Connor and Felicity and Liam and Jean Paul and Will and Lucy and Polly etc etc. But the author cannily begins to join the dots, drawing you into her world of middle-class stress, shock, love, pain, heartache, sex, grief and hope, set mostly in Melbourne and Sydney. She spins out the tension for a while until, 43 per cent of the way into…
What if there was no twist at the end? Using the Berlin Wall as a parallel story, Moriarty weaves the story of Cecilia, Rachel and Tess – three women who are experiencing change in their lives. Cecilia has the husband with the secret and I really enjoyed the way she examined each of the possibilities of what his secret could be and what her friends would advise. So many times we see a wife completely blindsided by what is so obvious, and I enjoyed watching her mind jump from possibility to possibility.Â