Wife

Poleaxed after finishing this. Charlotte Mendelson at her soul-searing best. Narcissistic monsters and suffocating families are quite the specialty of hers, but Wife is just unbearably brilliantNigella Lawson, TV cook and bestselling author of Eat, Cook, Repeat

Wife is a gift to the reader in its gimlet-eyed and heartfelt observations, its irresistible sentences and its compassionate, sometimes surgical storytelling. Charlotte Mendelson tells the truth: slant, suspect, hidden, hard – and often hilariousAmy Bloom, bestselling author of In Love

'This is a love story,' Zoe tells the reader, and it is, profoundly so, in the end. But I'll remember it more as a thriller, for the way Mendelson manages to make what looks from the outside like a sad but unremarkable day – packing, Tube journeys – feel like sweaty offcuts from The Bourne Identity . . . God, you want Zoe to get away. Does she? Better read the bookThe Sunday Times

A family saga of great insight, with another magnificently grotesque villain at its heartThe Observer