Review: Trad Wife by Sarah Langan

Rating: 8.5/10

Your favourite influencer is about to be exposed . . .

Every day, millions watch Mia Wright, the “trad wife” queen, on her idyllic 300-acre farm. With her handsome husband, seven perfect children, and a life of from-scratch meals, she’s an icon of modern femininity. But behind every perfect image is a lie.

Desperate to save her tarnished career, journalist Jenny Kaplan arrives at Black Swan Farm to profile Mia. Jenny is ready to write a scathing exposé, determined to uncover the deception behind Mia’s curated life.

But there’s something wrong at the farmhouse.

It slithers through Jenny’s dreams when the children sing strange nursery rhymes at night. She’s losing time. She’s losing her hair. She starts to worry that she’s losing her mind.

There is a horror at the heart of Black Swan, and it’s waiting just for Jenny.

In a word, Sarah Langan’s “Trad Wife,” the second of its name to cross my desk this week, is sinister. Intensely uncanny, white-knuckle tense, wholly unnerving, Langan’s latest was one that I really took my time with, basked in the unremitting, methodic, apron-clad dread of. As one might expect from Sarah Langan, this long, low hum of something very wrong indeed, is accompanied with some top quality prose, and is paced poised for one hell of a crescendo. Admittedly I got a little ahead of myself here, Langan’s “Trad Wife,” does not bless, or indeed curse bookshelves until May 14th from Tor Nightfire in the UK (thank you for my ARC) and Autumn from Atria Books in the US- I just had to warn you about it now though.

We follow Jenny Kaplan, a journalist who seemed to reach the very pinnacle of the profession with her candid article ‘Draino’. It discussed the end of her relationship, her abortion- it was lauded, shared, reshared, canonised- and briefly made her career. When you’ve reached the top however, the only place to go is down. Gravity baby! Her downfall greased by a gaggle of internet trolls and the Stoughton family’s ownership of Bread & Circus Magazine, Jenny is eventually let go. On her way out though her apologetic manager offers her a small goldmine. Mia Wright of Black Swan Farm is at the very forefront of the ‘trad wife,’ movement, having even released her own outrageously popular product line. Her children are angelic, her steadfast husband Steadman a slab of dependable masculinity. Her life is perfect, and having read that infamous article, Jenny Kaplan is the one she wants to capture it. Our protagonist is ready to revive her career with the exposé of the century, but the reality is far more horrifying than even the biggest of Wright’s skeptics could anticipate. 

I’m a big believer in that horror does not and should not always set out to scare in the traditional sense. Horror can be eerie or cerebral, or a manner of other things, and whilst Langan’s “Trad Wife,” does happen to be dizzying and delirious and very eerie and unsettling, it is also, predominantly, very fucking don’t-read-this-before-bed scary. The uncanniness of Black Swan Farm and Mia Wright is exuded at a cellular level and permeates every fibre of every page- it is vivid and visceral, a masterclass in dread-building. My once pristine (unfortunately matte) ARC copy now bears the evidence of my sweaty palms and clenched fingers- the bulk of the damage was likely done in that one instance of a near degloving- I was reeling. Anyway, by the time reality softens and we take a Robert Chambers-esque lurch into the eldritch, we are far too hooked to give in to the fear, harpooned really, but still with our hearts in our mouths.

Of course “Trad Wife,” is a rageful excoriation of that titular trad-wife complex, but also the self-cannibalising state of the journalism industry (which as a journalism student hit me in all those soft, anxious places) sexism both historically and currently rife in small towns particularly, limited access to medication and mental health support, and pyramid schemery. Langan examines the Salem-like treatment of a character in her novel’s history, in addition to the entirely contemporary, somehow more palatable type of oppression that seems to have manifested in areas of the trad-wife community. Whilst Langan’s latest is certainly thrilling, such thrills are not cheap, the rage focused and no intellect sacrificed for impact.

Ballerina Farm meets “A King in Yellow,” meets Shirley Jackson in “Trad Wife.” Filtered through an influencer’s ring light Langan combines the low grade nausea of domestic horror and dread of a more sublime nature- the result is ridiculously impressive and damnably frightening.