My book review of 'The Best Way to Bury Your Husband' by Alexia Casale
This didn't really sound like my sort of book! Just where could this go? How morally compromised would I feel reading about four women who have forged a friendship because they have each killed their husbands?
But I started reading it, warily out of curiousity, and I couldn't put it down. Brilliant!
Now this being a thriller, of sorts, I can't tell you too much about the plot and this is a book you need to discover with each turn of the page, just as I did.
But let me say that we are introduced to Sally who's having a tough time in lockdown. Her husband has never been 'easy' to live with and cooped up together, things are so much worse, until one day she lashes out and hits him on the head with a heavy pan. With him lying lifeless on her kitchen floor, what is she going to do next?
As Sally ponders her dilemma, she is drawn to neighbours and friends who oddly have very similar catastrophes, and so they team up.
It's a black comedy - again, not something I'm usually drawn to, but this is so clever. It's got the feel of cosy crime or the feel of a theatrical farce or tv slapstick sitcom. But there's an underlying, deeply serious message of great importance to the writer - domestic abuse and violence against women. She handles the serious with the high comedy brilliantly, I think, so that you find yourself weeping at the reality of some women's lives while feeling curiously uplifted by the spirit of the characters and the incidents in the story. Loved it.