RECIPE FOR A PERFECT WIFE
Recipe for a Perfect Wife by Karma Brown In her new novel, Recipe For A Perfect Wife, Karma Brown explores the idea that things haven’t changed that much for women in the last fifty years when it comes to marriage, and the perfect, stay at home wife of the 50’s actually has more in common than we’d like to admit with her counterpart in 2020. Told from dual narratives of two new wives—Nellie, in the 1950’s and Alice in 2018, the story is a little slow to get going. Brown begins with Alice making a move from the big city to the suburbs with Nate, her husband. Alice as a character is difficult to get a handle on at first and tends to come off as unsympathetic and secretive. But once Nellie is introduced, the story really takes off as she her attempts to fashion herself as the perfect wife for husband, Richard. Perfectly groomed, with seamed stockings, lipstick and cocktails waiting at the door for her work-weary husband she conjures up numerous bizarre (to our modern,