To The Last Page

Essentially, Louise Mey's La deuxième femme ('The Second Wife', or 'The Second Woman' as the English language edition prefers to name it) appears to be one of those exploitative thrillers where a vulnerable woman begins to suspect that she doesn't really know the man she is living with, that he keeps secrets from her and that she may become a victim. That's not to say that the situation is not a very real one, or at least the underlying sentiment is real and relatable even if not every woman lives with a murderer or would-be murderer. The strength of this one however is in the level of detail, the writing conveying the whole complexity of feelings and realisations not just about the present situation, but to the backgrounds that give rise to how people behave and react. Moved by a television appeal by a man who she refers to for most of the book only as “ l’homme qui pleure ” (the crying man) Sandrine joins in the search for his missing wife. She sees in hi...