By Sarah Langan
Thanks to NetGalley, the publisher and the author for the opportunity to read and review this ARC.
I stayed up until the wee hours of the morning to finish this book the same day I picked it up. I don’t know if that means this was a fantastic book, or a compelling book or if it was like reading a murder/mystery where I just wanted to know “whodunnit”. This is not a murder/ mystery book, but like all horror novels you need to read to the end to reveal the malevolent force that is making all the townspeople go crazy. It’s a formula like any genre fiction and when it works it can be a sublime piece of literature. I’ve read my fair share of Stephen King and Peter Straub novels, and was weaned on VC Andrews. I love a good creeping terror story, although I do not read a lot of newer horror novels in this phase of my reading life.
I picked up this book because I’m fascinated/horrified with Trad Wife culture (and MLM companies) and how these “pro woman” messages are using women to claw back their own rights. Remove the mask to reveal it’s been the patriarchy all along! I think we can agree that the Trad Wife movement is anti-feminist. Trad Wife is a feminist horror novel, which I think is a sub genre now, but don’t quote me on that because I am not an expert. I know that a lot of women’s fiction writers have been exploring exploitation and gender in a horror framework. It’s not my thing, but I’ve been around a lot of women’s movements and feminist “waves” and i get the language when it’s presented to me.
The premise is our protagonist Jenny, is a middling writer for a dying publication who is faced with post thirty malaise and a series of losses that she can’t process properly In a moment of drunken self pity and wallowing in her circumstances, she writes out all the things that killed her marriage (mostly her husband having a mental health crisis that she was unable to deal with) and hits send to her editor. He loves it, posts it and it goes viral. She’s a feminist darling for her essay and gets all the accolades that her mediocre writing talent never afforded her in the past. But, as things go, she has stepped to far into feminist discourse in this current climate and she is cancelled as fast as she was lauded.
But, as a last chance effort to keep herself afloat she is offered a chance to write an article about a Trad Wife influencer in some backwoods small town in Western Pennsylvania, and cynical Jenny, who is certain these influencers are not as pious or traditional as they seem, jumps at the chance to interview Mia, pregnant mother of 7 who is the woman behind ‘Black Swan Farm’. Of course, as horror novels go, something is not quite right in the town and it’s all centred around this farm and the popular Mia Wright.
Here’s the thing about this book. I’m not sure if I’m supposed to like Jenny. The message by the end of the book is that men are responsible for evil, whether it’s through hatred of women, distrust of women’s nature or just plain ignorance and being driven by sexual needs and the need to be loved by someone unconditionally. That the only type of man that can see a woman’s true nature is a man that is unable to function in society. There is not one decent portrayal of a man in the entire book, and this evil entity that feeds off the women who admire the trad life lifestyle is actually a male entity, forcing women to do his bidding as that is just it’s nature. Submit and I’ll grant you personal freedom, at the cost of the freedom of all women.
I guess in the end I’m just confused as to what the message is supposed to be here. If we feel sympathetic towards Jenny, she has been forced into this horror situation because “society”. Her mother was oppressed, her sister was oppressed, she is powerless under the weight of the male white Christian; she is another innocent victim of the patriarchy. However, if we read Jenny as the spoiled white woman who got a journalism degree from Rutgers, despite never actually excelling at it but just wanted to really be “a writer”, who was working as a full time journalist for a minor Conde Nast publication, post Covid, no less, who lived in New York City but was just. not. satisfied with her life. Her husband called her selfish before he left her, after making her life a living hell, she can’t bond with her nephew because she had to raise her younger sister while her mother worked two jobs and she is done with kids. There is nothing more infuriating than women spouting feminism while living a privileged life. And when looked at through that lens, then maybe she is not so different from the trad wife in terms of faking it. And if that is the point, then we have a very cynical reading of Jenny’s descent. At her core she is selfish and has no empathy for the people around her, but sees it as being noble in not asking others for help. She is just wound up so tight, but maybe she actually doesn’t care about anyone but herself. I am just not sure if that’s how I’m supposed to read this novel.
I ended up giving this a 3.75 / 5 stars in Storygraph, still a decent rating because the writing is good and the creeping horror is good, but this is no Stephen King level of small town horror. I also feel like there is a point here being made about women that I’m not sure I agree with. I keep thinking about that meme “I do not support all women, some of you bitches are really dumb” and that’s how I feel about Jenny.
