The Echo Wife (2021) Sarah Gailey ★★★★★ July 19 – 20, 2023
I support women's rights, but more importantly, I support women's wrongs.
There are mixed reviews for this book. Primary complaints focus on the main character being intensely unlikable. Personally, I loved that. I'm tired of female characters who are designed to be palatable, pretty, smart, and morally correct. Evelyn Caldwell is flawed. She's rageful, cruel, dismissive, calculating. She repeatedly makes choices that are irrational (and painful to read), because they were shaped by reactive impulses rather than compassion.
In short, she feels like a real person.
She has complicated relationships with both of parents, and she projects those issues and traumas onto the people in her life. She's reactive and defensive in an attempt to protect herself from emotional hurt. She's the survivor of an abusive relationship, and she's recovering from a betrayal of unspeakable proportions. Reviewers who claim she's "impossible to understand" have a limited and unrealistic view of trauma and how it can manifest. Try reading this again after a heartbreak and see how you feel about her.
(Relatedly, every other character in the novel is flawed and messy, too, which is a real delight.) The Echo Wife explores a ton of interesting ideas about generational trauma, identity, self-actualization, patriarchy, and marriage.
Generational Trauma
From the frame of Martine as a sort of daughter to Evelyn:
Obvious parallels between Evelyn's mother's secret, Evelyn's line of work, and Martine's secret.
Evelyn's father's cruelty & mannerisms is reflected in Evelyn's worst behaviors towards Martine.
Evelyn, Martine, and Violet break inherited patterns of abuse.
From the frame of Martine as an inner-self of Evelyn:
Evelyn's self-critical and abusive internal voice is healed through learning to be kind / considerate to Martine. Evelyn develops the ability to be kind to herself, through her practice considering Martine's needs. (And yet, Evelyn is not completely changed/healed, either.)
Evelyn rages at every part of Martine that reminds her of her mother. Evelyn is disgusted by every part of herself that reminds her of Martine. Evelyn suppresses behaviors that remind her of her parents, but rely on those behaviors and thinking patterns for survival.
Identity / Self-Actualization
Martine starts to express her self-actualization (i.e., "rebellious teenager" phase) during the specimen Zed period. Evelyn has a lot of pride in Martine for it.
The differences between Martine and Evelyn are not explicitly attributed to programming, early development, or later self-actualization. The ability to attribute them to any/all of the above allows for thinking on the nature of personality (nature vs. nurture).
Evelyn sometimes sees Martine as a sort of "idealized self" she can both hate for her "perfection" and use as a cudgel with which to internally flog herself. Using Martine as a benchmark with which to shame and hate herself is an urge that comes from her unstable sense of self-worth. Evelyn's later ability to see Martine as a person, especially an individual person, stems from her development of a small measure of self-compassion.
Patriarchy
Evelyn and Martine represent the two sides of one of the major choices that frame a woman's life: Whether or not to have children. Both are absolutely certain of their choice, even though everyone in their lives undermines and questions their knowledge of their own desires. Both suffer for their choice in unspeakable ways.
I hurt from Evelyn's internal monologues around the ways in which social expectations of gendered presentation shape her every thought, habit, and action. The author really has something good here.