I really had no idea what to expect from this novel when I picked it up – the description on the cover – “A husband, a wife, a lover. Each has a secret they’d kill to protect” is more beguiling than informative. Which is a bit of clever marketing probably. But it doesn’t really matter as I was soon caught up in the story which is told from the perspectives of two women.
First we have Bea, who is a working woman in the 1920s, living in a ladies’ club in Bloomsbury. She’s good at her office job and has worked her way up to have some responsibility. At thirty-seven, she feels she’s missed out on marriage and a family, but is happy with her life. She is independent and can afford to treat herself now and then. Her life is sharply compared with that of her somewhat self-satisfied sister Jane, who has married well and is a little sneering of her sister’s London lifestyle.
But at work, everything changes when a new salesman joins the team, the handsome and very charming Tom Ryan. The other girls gossip and flirt with Tom, while Bea keeps her head down and tries to ignore him. But she can’t deny the power of his personality. We follow the affair that develops, how Tom singles out Bea; their shared love of literature and self-improvement. Bea discovers another side to her that she’d mostly ignored, her capacity to love and be loved.
The story interweaves Bea’s story with that of Kate some months later as Kate deals with her husband’s arrest and the court case that follows. She is repeatedly questioned by the police about particular dates and the whereabouts of Tom, while trying to maintain a home for her daughter, and a veneer of respectability. She worries that her landlady will loose patience and they’ll be out on the streets.
I am his wife.
I am only his wife.
This is all I know how to say. To the policemen who come to the house, who take me to the police station, who ask me questions, I say over and over, ‘I don’t understand. I am only his wife.’
And they both look at me – the fat one with the moustache and the thin one with the coarse ginger hair – they look at me as though I am a child they are disappointed in.
Kate is also employed by Morley’s in the office, but at another branch. She needs her work to keep her small family afloat but how to do this with all the police activity, the newspaper interest. Kindly policeman, Inspector Wilde, is a quietly probing interrogator, patient and biding his time.
The court case that develops is based on true events. Emma Flint captures the fascination it engenders in the press and those who crowd onto the the public benches, the prejudices against the victim and the sympathy for the plaintiff. How the case unfolds is a brilliant piece of story-telling, particularly Kate’s role in the revelation of what happened, her feelings as a wife and mother balanced against her need to do the right thing.
Other Women is a haunting novel that brings to life the characters of two women who have been connected by a terrible event. It captures the post-war years and a time when Britain was still recovering from the tragic loss of a so many young men, and what this meant for women in the years following. The writing is exquisite – very atmospheric, evocative and empathetic.
As I began to read the early chapters, I wasn’t sure whether I was going to enjoy Other Women, but Emma Flint makes it all so compelling and believable and I know the novel will haunt me for days and weeks to come. Flint’s a master storyteller and writes with conviction and power. Her earlier book, Little Deaths picked up quite a few nominations for book prizes, and I imagine Other Women might well do the same. It gets four and a half stars from me.
Judith McKinnon 