Recipe for a Perfect Wife By Karma Brown | Book Review

We often stated that the perks of being a professional book reviewer, that to too associated with the prestigious Team ThinkerViews, involve exposure to many new talents. To add to that, we got a chance to read our books from various other countries also. That gives us a chance to know more about various cultures and people’s way of living.

It helps us in expanding our vision and realize the fact that some things which are obvious to one culture may not be the same for the other and vice/versa. These books also help us in realizing that the basic emotions, feelings and even problems are almost same for the majority of people. No matter what culture, caste or country they belong to.

Adding to the list today we are going to talk about Recipe for a Perfect Wife by Karma Brown. The kindle version of the book is provided to us as a review copy by -The Legend Press – the publisher. The views and reviews shared here are personal and uninfluenced by all means.

Book Cover:

As we all know, the book cover plays a very important role in creating the first impression of the book. It is expected to be attractive and at the same time, rightly representing the content of the book. It influences a large number of potential readers and/or buyers to read/buy the book. Let us take a look at the cover page of Recipe for a Perfect Wife.

As you can imagine the book talks about “a perfect wife”. So expecting a lady on the cover page is obvious. And, as you can see, you find a lady wearing a regular house-wife dress dominating the cover page. It represents the perception of a house-wife, widely accepted by both the genders (not saying whether it is right or wrong). The cover page is slightly different in different editions of the book.

Overall, it conveys the heart of the message the book is trying to elaborate.

To avoid spoilers, I will not go into the details of the plot. Let us take a bird’s eye view of the same.

The book explores stories of various families living in Europe. They have almost a typical family environment in their respective homes. The wives are expected to do household stuff and take care of the family. And to fulfill these needs, they are expected to leave their job(s), welcome their respective husbands when they come back home and remain presentable to them.

There is, of course, a lot more to that. Sometimes the economy doesn’t go well for you, or your financial decision doesn’t prove fruitful, or even your decision to buy a property might be untimely or you might have chosen a wrong property to purchase,…

How one behaves in such a challenging situation reflects his/her true nature.

Karma explored the typical orthodox mindset of the society. While women are often expected to do more work, they are not given due credit and are treated as a second gender. This is seen almost everywhere, especially when you explore the stuff belong to the medieval time. Of course, it was not the case for all families or countries. There were exceptions and they must be appreciated. Here we are just talking about the majority of people, not all.

The author has explored this environment quite effectively. When reading the book, you feel for the characters. And, when you can connect with one or more characters of a book emotionally, it is the author’s success.

It is often seen that such books do male-bashing in order to explore their pro-feminism aspects. Here in this book, I’ve found that the author remained unbiased and tried to represent the environment from a neutral perspective. That is one more success for the author.

You will find a remarkable quote at the beginning of each chapter. The quote goes in sync with the content of the chapter and often summarizes the chapter (or sometimes represents the background of the events explored in it) in quite a remarkable way.

Here is one such quote:

Art is a hard mistress, and there is no art quite so hard as that of being a wife.
-Blanche Ebbutt, Don’ts for Wives, 1913

In this book, you will find references to various works like “Devil Wears Prada”. The author is good at detailing also. For example, read these lines from the book:

Alice tucked a stray piece of hair behind her ear, wanting desperately to change the subject.

And yes, there are several recipes also explored in the book as well.

The way, the women were (and in some places, are) expected to behave, appear and represent themselves in the way her man wants, is found written quite effectively in the book.

Nellie Murdoch buttoned her dungarees – which she wore only to garden because her husband, Richard, preferred her in skirts – and tapped the Lucky’s white-and-red-foil cigarette package on the table against her hand…

The way she has to behave in a funeral is also eye-opening. Here are some of the character-defining and emotion exploring lines from the book.

Richard’s voice was low, but there was no mistaking his tone.
Her heart beat faster as she stood, depositing the soiled napkin on her untouched plate.

Here is one more segment:

“Thank you, Richard,” Nellie managed. He didn’t deserve her decency, but he expected it. Even in pain, Nellie understood her role – the wife who bowed to her husband, who apologized for things out of her control, who made his life easier even if it made hers harder. The perfect wife.

Reading this book will shake you from within, if you are a genuine and emotional fellow. It will make you think “Are we progressing as a society? Is this behavior acceptable?”

Summary:

If you are looking for something emotional that you can read with an open mind, if you can take a neutral look at what various stuff men have done to women, and more importantly, learn something – especially what shouldn’t be done, to anyone, this book is for you.

Around 7 out of 10.

Quick Purchase Links:

• Buy Book From Amazon India – Paperback
• Buy Book From Amazon India – Kindle EBook
• Buy Book From Amazon India – Audiobook
• Buy Book From Amazon US – Paperback
• Buy Book From Amazon US – Kindle EBook
• Buy Book From Amazon US – Audiobook

Over To You: