Recipe for a Perfect Wife

Recipe for a Perfect Wife is two-stories-in-one, a story of Alice Hale living in our current time, as well as a story of Nellie Murdoch living in the 1950s. Both Alice and Nellie are young wives, and both are deeply unhappy. Both Alice and Nellie are married to controlling husbands, and each eventually finds a way to solve that problem.

I enjoyed the dual nature of the stories and how the stories of the past touched the stories of the present day. I enjoyed the visit to 1950s suburbia—yes, doctors often recommended smoking to pregnant mothers as a way to relax, and we all know what happened with the nausea-repressing drug thalidomide.

I didn't enjoy the way the people in the story communicated with each other. It was painful to sit on conversations between husband-and-wife and friend-to-friend and boss-to-employee that were toxic. Almost everyone spent a great amount of time lying to each other, and that, of course, had awful consequences.