Review by Booklist Review
It's a story as old as time, older man takes in ingénue. The protégé attains success, and envy rears its ugly head. JB Blackwood was a college student when she became enamored with her film studies professor, Patrick Heller. During their 14-year marriage, Blackwood is as much a ballast to her husband's thriving career as he is to hers. Yet, in a patriarchal society, it's all semantics. "As my experience started to match his, and as my successes--by some measures--even exceeded his, the idea of my youth dissolved," Blackwood remembers. Eager to salvage their rocky relationship, Blackwood convinces Patrick to go on a couples cruise as an anniversary celebration. Unfortunately, during a storm, Patrick falls overboard and drowns. Blackwood, a self-professed unreliable narrator, falls under the microscope. Bishop (The Other Side of the World, 2016) expertly dissects the innards of a seesaw relationship and the inequities women must battle. The bristling arguments crackle brilliantly. In the end, "did she or did she not" is almost beside the point. It's the marriage that keeps us engaged.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
The simmering latest from Bishop (The Other Side of the World) explores an unbalanced marriage and a mysterious death. Fourteen years ago, author J.B. Blackwood married her much older former professor, Patrick Heller, now a film director with a cultlike following; his success has put an increasing strain on their relationship. She talks him into taking a cruise from Alaska to Japan to celebrate their anniversary, but after a few boozy days on the water, an unexpected storm seizes their boat, and Patrick falls overboard and drowns. J.B. returns from the vacation alone, grappling with her husband's sudden death and forced into the limelight as the widow of a famous man. Though J.B.'s star had finally begun to rise before her spouse's death, thanks to a New Yorker profile and a big prize nomination, Patrick continues to overshadow her ("even in death he had the power to eclipse my own achievements," she thinks). Among other instances when Patrick exploited their uneven power dynamic, J.B. recalls their secret professor-student relationship and Patrick's uncredited use of her work for his most successful films. Bishop sustains a breakneck pace, keeping up the suspense with lingering questions about the circumstances of Patrick's death. The result is beguiling and incisive in equal measure. (July)
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