Week 11

Do you ever just feel like there are too many books?

I feel this way sometimes.

Anyway, uh, happy anniversary to COVID coming to Ottawa I guess.

#15) THE ECHO WIFE by Sarah Gailey

This was one of my most anticipated books of 2020, and it didn’t disappoint!

Woman realizes that her husband cloned a “better” version of herself, and then they have to work together when he “somehow” ends up dead?? Hell yes, sign me up for THAT.

Obviously, the plot is really interesting and Gailey is doing some fun things with the themes of what makes an individual and how people (often women) are shaped and abused by the men around them. That’s all really good stuff, and in true Gailey fashion, they handle it with aplomb.

However, for me, the standouts are the characters. Both the main character, Evelyn, and her clone, Martine, are fascinating characters, allowed to develop naturally throughout the novel. Evelyn is a deeply flawed, quite “unlikeable” character, in a way that women are very rarely allowed to be. Meanwhile, watching Martine understand and expand from her origins as a “nicer, softer” clone are excellent as well.

If I had any criticisms, it’s that the story perhaps ends a little abruptly. That may just be that I would have read several hundred more pages of this book, and it’s not that things were necessarily left unresolved, but I felt that I could’ve used a little more information about Evelyn’s endpoint and what it all meant.

All in all, though, I really liked this one. Gailey, damn it, you’ve done it again!