The Art of Hiding

The Art of Hiding by Amanda Prowse (Women’s Contemporary Fiction)

The missing husband with a deep, dark secret and a clueless wife has become a familiar trope in women’s contemporary fiction. (See The Best Kind of People by Zoe Whittall.)

Something terrible takes the husband out of the picture — be it death, a trip from which he never returns, or accusation of a heinous crime. The wife, accustomed to an idyllic life of upper class ease and opulence, is suddenly faced with harsh reality: she has been married for decades to a man she doesn’t really know. To make matters worse, their finances — of which she has always remained blissfully ignorant — are a mess. Her high-society friends turn their backs.  Now, fraught with anger and disillusionment, she must struggle to remake her life, come to terms with his deceptive behavior, and figure out why he did this to her and the kids. At the same time, she mourns his loss and must protect her children from the truth about their father so as not to taint his memory.

In The Art of Hiding, Nina is a socially stunted stay-at-home British mom who has always let her husband, Finn, take care of everything. When Finn dies in a fatal single-car accident, she learns they are penniless; his formerly thriving construction business has gone belly up, and she never knew. He owes an exorbitant amount of money to creditors, and every family possession, except for the clothes on their backs, is being taken by court order — the huge house in a posh neighborhood, all of its expensive contents, their luxury car. Nina’s two boys can no longer go to their expensive private school, and they are not welcome in the homes of their former friends. Her sister, Tiggy, from whom she has become estranged, comes to help, even though she has always disapproved of Finn’s influence on Nina.

Thrown out on the street, with no car and no work experience, Nina is an emotional, incompetent mess. She has no skills; she has lived her entire adult life within her husband’s shadow, letting him take responsibility for everything. She’s in tears a lot, and she’s at loose ends, afraid of trying anything. Her teen-aged son is understandably sullen and angry; her pre-teen son is more resilient and forgiving. For much of the book, we watch them struggle until finally Nina gets a job, and the family comes to terms with its new life.

The story is told solely from the point of view of Nina, and, to be honest, I skimmed much of the middle while she languishes in grief and confusion. I found myself less than sympathetic to her dilemma. We’re shown glimpses of her sad, somewhat abusive childhood, but instead of making her tough and self-sufficient like her sister, it apparently left her eager to let someone else take care of her. Her total lack of awareness regarding her husband’s stress-filled, apparently suicide-inducing daily existence seemed unrealistic. The one character I truly enjoyed was Tiggy.  I didn’t know the boys well enough to have more than a cursory interest in their story’s outcome, and I was pretty sure what it would be anyway.

The writing, for me, was uninspired and at times, the dialogue seemed stilted and unnatural.

Grandma gives The Art of Hiding three stars.

Bella Reads and Reviews Books received a free copy from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

The Art of Hiding will be released on August 22, 2017, and is available for pre-order.