A long way? We haven’t come as far as you think
Oakville writer’s thriller contrasts the difference between two generations of women
Internationally bestselling Oakville author Karma Brown is known for writing emotionally charged novels that require keeping a stash of tissues nearby. Deep secrets and tested friendships, romantic betrayals, life-altering accidents: she’s put her protagonists through a lot over four novels.
But in between writing bestsellers such as “Come Away with Me” and “The Life Lucy Knew,” Brown — once referred to as the female Nicholas Sparks — had a secret project on the go, a new novel that is unlike any of her previous books.
“Recipe for a Perfect Wife” is a timehopping, dark domestic mystery, sprinkled with a dash of female empowerment and a few vintage baking tips.
“This is not the book that will have you crying your eyes out on the subway while you’re reading,” says Brown, who found writing her latest story to be a freeing, empowering experience.
“Recipe for a Perfect Wife” follows two storylines. There’s Alice Hale, a Manhattan publicist who detests the idea of suburban life. She only agrees to move to a fixer-upper of a house in the commuter town of Greenville to distract her husband Nate from finding out the truth about why she lost her job. Alice is trapped between her own career desires and Nate’s dream of starting a family in the suburbs.
And that book Alice is supposed to be writing with all her new free time while her husband is at work? She never even started. She’s too lost and confused to focus on anything creative. But life changes when Alice finds an old box of well-thumbed cookbooks and copies of “Ladies’ Home Journal” in the basement belonging to the mysterious Nellie Murdoch.
The idea of Nellie, who lived in the house 60 years prior with her husband, Richard, haunts Alice, who finds new purpose transforming herself into a modern Suzy Homemaker. She becomes deeply obsessed with 1950s domestic culture, starts wearing retro dresses and seamed stockings, and attempts to replicate Nellie’s recipes for tuna casserole and baked Alaska.
Brown understands the “Mad Men” appeal of the era, and why Alice would be attracted to its colourful, kitschy aesthetic.
“Everyone is so well put together. Their houses were immaculate and they dressed in these beautiful clothes to just go to a dinner party down the road. No one was wearing Lululemon pants to go grocery shopping,” says Brown, who realized once she started researching that, while the 1950s were perhaps a simpler time, they came at a cost — the strict enforcement of rules around gender.
“There were just so many fewer choices,” Brown says.
Brown comes from a long line of bakers, and has inherited many old cookbooks and recipes passed down through generations. They helped inspire her vision of telling the real story behind Nellie’s seemingly perfect life and how she hides a darker truth about her marriage through her favourite recipes.
“I just loved this idea — particularly in times where women weren’t allowed to have opinions — that they really spoke through their cooking and through these books,” Brown says. “I felt like there is a legacy of women being heard through these cookbooks.”
Each chapter begins with a recipe from Brown’s collection, including some from the iconic Canadian “Purity Cookbook” and the “Five Roses Cook Book.” Brown tested some of the recipes with her daughter, she says, with mixed results. The baked Alaska was OK, “definitely edible.” Other chapters cite passages from vintage marriage manuals, instructing women on how to please their husbands through subservience.
While Nellie’s situation is terrible, it is also more clear-cut than Alice’s. Brown found herself really feeling Alice’s desperation, which also made her a more challenging character to write. She struggled developing Alice’s present-day narrative, wanting to show the pressures women still experience in a patriarchal culture to be perfect in all aspects of their lives, and how they are often perceived as an ungrateful or horrible person for wanting their desires met.
“I think we have come a long way, but we have not come as far as maybe we would like to think when it comes to women’s rights and the gender expectations within a marriage and a family,” Brown says. “It did take me some time to figure out how to write it, without seeming like Alice is just selfish for wanting more than what she has.”
“Recipe for a Perfect Wife” ends in a wonderfully sly way, best served without any spoilers, other than to say that sometimes history does repeat itself.
“I think that from Nellie, Alice learns about her own power and that you have the right to take charge of your own life,” says Brown. “There will be times that you have to make sacrifices, but you do need to think of what you want and need.”