THE PENMAKER'S WIFE

Spoiler alert: Angelica Chastain, heroine of THE PENMAKER'S WIFE, may be among the most diabolical, manipulative women in recent fiction. Narrator Clare Corbett delivers Angelica's convoluted story of love, murder, and betrayal with all the precise period diction of the 1880s in place. She inhabits several points of view, making each devastatingly real. It's hard to like a woman who throws herself and her young son off a bridge into the Thames. However, they survive and run from her past as she becomes, first, a governess and, then, the respectable wife of a wealthy widower. With controlled understatement, Corbett establishes a calculating woman capable of despicable acts. Robinson has written a chilling character-driven story, and Corbett offers a believable sociopath and her victims. S.J.H. © AudioFile 2020, Portland, Maine [Published: JANUARY 2020]