The Secret Wife is the third novel by Australian author, Mark Lamprell. It’s 1961, and Edith Devine is happily married to Charlie, mother of teenaged Margaret and Susan, and content to spend her days in her new, (non-quite-intentionally) gun-metal-grey, house in a new subdivision, a devoted Catholic and a dedicated homemaker. So why is she, several times a week, sneaking into the house across the road to clean and prepare meals?

As soon as Edie saw the buttercup-yellow house (amid a street of pastels) she wanted to know the owner. When she meets beautiful, loud Francesca Heyman, she is desperate to impress. Introverted Edie is sure she’s failed, but Frankie is just as fascinated: they click.

Edie never actually realises that Frankie shares her crush: “Nobody could express pleasure and disapproval in the same smile quite as gloriously as Edith. Frankie ached to see that smile. When they first met, she thought Edith a funny fish, oddly clever, endearingly forthright. She had not the slightest idea of the impact the lady across the road would make upon her. Frankie could not place the moment that Edith had hooked her heart, but that was what happened—what must have happened. Because at some point Frankie lost herself.”

Police Senior Sergeant Ralph Heyman, though, is a bit controlling, Edie observes. When Frankie is about to dismiss a modelling job offer, something she’s desperate to do, Edie offers to do Frankie’s housekeeping so that she will pass Ralph’s weekly white glove test. As for his odometer check, Frankie has a clever way around that…

So Frankie models and Edie cleans. Some days they have close calls and Frankie is quick and inventive, but Edie worries about the fallout if (or more likely, when) Ralph discovers the deceit.

What a quirky, but lovable protagonist Edie is! From a young age, she has observed: “Normally a momentous event in her life would be foreshadowed by a momentous event in the larger world” although on one occasion she worries it might be the reverse. Her back story is told whenever Frankie needs a distraction: a life that includes grief and loss, a brush with a paedophile, and several failed pregnancies, all offset by the unfailing love and support of the wonderful Charlie.

Is Edie the foil for the flamboyant Frankie, or is it the other way around? The remaining cast includes two young women questioning their parents’ values, a cross-dressing teen, and nosy neighbours. There are secret driving lessons, a handsome young priest, a suicide attempt, and a falling out, all against the backdrop of the swinging sixties and the space race.

With well-placed popular cultural references and world events, Lamprell easily evokes his era and the social mindset of that time. And with minimal effort, readers of a certain vintage will have instantly formed an image in their minds of the setting: the street, the house, the décor, the fashion and the food. The story is occasionally a bit far-fetched, often hilarious but sometimes lump-in-the-throat tearful, so have the tissues ready, especially for the final chapters. This is Lamprell’s best yet.
This unbiased review is from an uncorrected proof copy provided by NetGalley and Text Publishing.