Question: AITAH?

Answer: ESH

In case you have no idea what that means, a subreddit exists called AITAH — Am I The Asshole? Members explain a situation in which they thought they were right, but other people in their lives felt they behaved like assholes, so, they bring it to the internet to settle the debate. Like you do. The common replies are YTA (you’re the asshole) or NTA (not the asshole). But Redditors also see that middle answer: ESH (everyone sucks here). For the first 154 pages of Trad Wife by Saratoga Schaefer, all I could think was everyone sucks here.

Camille wants to be a trad wife, simply short for “traditional wife” but the role has more frightening, toxic implications. This is a real thing; you see trad wives on social media wearing beautiful dresses, walking around barefoot, collecting chicken eggs, baking bread, homeschooling their children, and serving their husbands. Camille was a twenty-year-old virgin when she met her husband, Graham, at a farmer’s market. He married her with the expectation that she would be a trad wife. The number of times Graham asks where his breakfast/lunch/dinner is will infuriate you. If Camille is dressed too casually, he’ll tell her to go change and put on makeup. And of course, what’s the point of being a trad wife if you don’t document it all on social media?

The ringleader in Camille’s social media world is Mara, a trad wife with eight children who doesn’t believe in silly things like vaccines or folic acid. You must grow your own food and serve your husband, who works to support you. Camille desperately wants to curate a life that mirrors Mara, and the most noticeable thing Camille lacks is a baby. But Graham has been distant, unwilling to be intimate with his wife (unless he “treats” her by offering himself for oral), and you can’t conceive a baby without your husband. Or can you?

After wandering beyond the wheat field behind their remote, farm-ish house (I write “ish” because trad wives love to pretend they are actual farmers), Camille finds a deep, bottomless well into which she throws a penny, manifesting a baby to complete her trad wife dreams. After, she is visited by an eye with wings in her dreams demanding to know why she wants a baby. When Camille asks Graham (a good Christian who obviously has a side chick) about angels, he explains that the Bible describes them as an eye with wings in some cases. A divine pregnancy! Of course!

And pregnant she is. Except the pregnancy develops faster than usual, and when the baby comes, it’s not what Camille (the reader is smarter) expects.

For those first 154 pages, I couldn’t stand Graham coming home for dinner whenever he felt like it, sleeping over and his “friend’s” house, leaving Camille in a remote home with no second car for her to leave, and telling her who and how to be. On the other hand, Camille’s excuses and wishes to be the person Graham demands is exhausting, too. You just have to wallow in their world to get situated for later stuff. Saratoga Schaefer writes in first-person point of view, and Camille sees herself as if she were describing a photo. Her skin is “sun-kissed,” she has “golden” locks, etc. — and this is from Camille’s POV, not an unknown narrator slathering on the cheese. I wanted to quit, to be honest, but a friend loaned me Trad Wife, and I wanted to finish.

Finally, when the baby comes and it’s not what Camille expects (haha, we could have warned her), things take off at a gallop. The angel (was that an angel?) starts to come around more, creeping out of the well and slithering up to the house while Graham is at work. A nosy neighbor — fellow stay-at-home mommy type — keeps stopping by, which makes it hard for Camille to hide the loose threads of her life. Meanwhile, Graham continues on after she’s given birth, wondering why she said no to a blow job, but sometimes he’s nicer. After she threw up at church, Camille explains, “He tells me not to worry about lunch; he’ll go meet his friends in town so I can rest in bed. ‘That way you’ll be right as rain and ready to cook dinner later,’ he says…”

It’s hard to not see where the book is going, but I still enjoyed the rollercoaster once it stopped click-clacking along to the top of the first hill. Of course, Camille is going to eventually say something to Graham about his expectations of her, and the final conversation between spouses is a treat: “He liked the cardboard-cutout version of me,” Schaefer writes, “that he could carry around and set up where he wanted. It must be shocking for him — as if a store mannequin suddenly came to life and called you a dick.” I’m guessing Schaefer writes from experience, as they note in their afterward that they, too, escaped a toxic relationship.

While enjoyed reading Trad Wife, I’m not sure I would pick up another mommy horror any time soon. I’ve read several lately, and it feels . . . old. Both Nestlings by Nat Cassidy and Suffer the Children by Craig DiLouie had similar vibes. I’m on the lookout for more horror with women that doesn’t focus on motherhood, birth, and feeding. One thing that Schaefer did differently is Trad Wife is basically set in a single location, much like a one-act play. Therefore, you feel closed in this space with the main character, making the story much more immersive.