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THE CHARMED WIFE

Olga Grushin

From the award-winning author comes a sophisticated literary fairy tale for the 21st Century, in which Cinderella, years after her marriage, is on the brink of leaving her supposedly perfect life behind.
Cinderella wants her prince charming dead. Thirteen and a half years ago, their marriage was meant to be the conclusion to her story, the fairy tale ending she deserved after years of servitude and sorrow. Yet after playing the role of dutiful wife, she finds herself left with an indifferent husband, two children she rarely sees, and a life that has not turned out as expected. Faced with limited options, Cinderella seeks out a witch known for her magnificent curses and reputation for helping spurned women. With her husband's life hanging in the balance, and her own reality crumbling along with it, Cinderella quickly finds herself reevaluating the fairy tale life she's been led to believe in.

As her reckoning begins, her tale treads the line between magic and reality, expanding into a rich tapestry that exquisitely combines the worlds of the Brothers Grimm and Charles Perrault with contemporary Manhattan, and revealing the uneasy truths hidden in the stories we love. Endlessly surprising and wildly inventive, THE CHARMED WIFE twists time and place, fantasy and reality, to conjure a world unlike any other, one that questions everything we think we know about romance, marriage, and the very nature of storytelling.

Olga Grushin is the author of Forty Rooms, The Line, and The Dream Life of Sukhanov. Born in Moscow, Grushin moved to the US at age 18 and writes in English. Her books have been translated into 17 languages. She lives outside Washington, DC.
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Published 2021-01-12 by Putnam

Comments

The Charmed Wife is a thought-provoking, wickedly clever, and beautifully written fairy-tale character study that enchants at every turn. Olga Grushin dissects fairy tales, marriage, and the messy human heart with a pen as sharp as any scalpel.

Lush and powerful, The Charmed Wife is brimful of magic and the seething darkness that lies beneath the glittering surface of every good fairy tale.

A dizzying retelling of 'Cinderella,' one in which nothing is as it seems and fairy tale marriages do not end happily ever after... Clever. Read more...

UK / Commonw.: Hodder & Stoughton

In The Charmed Wife, Olga Grushin turns the fairy-tale romance on its head, and then just keeps turning it, playfully, subversively, brilliantly: a feat of fierce imagination.

...Endlessly surprising, wildly inventive, and decidedly modern, The Charmed Wife weaves together time and place, fantasy and reality, to conjure a world unlike any other. Nothing in it is quite what it seemsthe twists and turns of its magical, dark, and swiftly shifting paths take us deep into the heart of what makes us unique, of romance and marriage, and of the very nature of storytelling. Read more...

An absorbing study of marriage, divorce, self, and responsibility, threaded with numerous retold fairytales and rendered in prescient, gorgeous language. Highly recommended.

The comedy is devastating in this autopsy of a marriage that dies of 'happily ever after' syndrome. Seldom has such emotional realism been spied in the precincts of wild magic. This alumna of the Cinderella marriage is overwhelmed, overenchanted, and so over it. Fall under its charms, I dare you.

The Charmed Wife is a modern take on the story of Cinderella, marriage, divorce and love that's surprising, darkly comedic and enchanting. Read more...

I'm always here for twisted literary retellings of classic fairy talesin this one, Cinderella is thirteen and a half years into her marriage to Prince Charming, and feels the need to seek the help of the local witch to fix what's gone wrong. . . that is, she wants to kill him. Sign me up, baby Read more...

With the publication of her first novel, Grushin instantly became one of my favorite writers. She touches the borders of myth and fairytale in everything she does, but never so explicitly as here, in this dark and dreamy retelling of Cinderella. Inside the plot, magic comes and goes. But inside the reader, it's all magic, all of us happily caught in Grushin's hypnotic spell.

[A] richly imagined, genre-bending retelling of, at its heart, a tale-as-old-as-time. Read more...

Genre-bending and darkly comic, Grushin's fourth novel is a weird and wonderful triumph. Read more...

This pretty dark comedy is as inventive and creative as it gets. Read more...

THE CHARMED WIFE is one of O, the Oprah Magazine's Most Anticipated Books of 2021 CNN's Best Books of January Lit Hub's Most Anticipated Books of 2021 Time Out's Best Books of January Frolic's Top 10 Books of January CrimeReads's Most Anticipated Books of 2021 Palm Beach Daily News's 2021 Book Recommendations Hello!'s Most Anticipated Books of 2021

The comedy is devastating in this autopsy of a marriage that dies of 'happily ever after' syndrome. Seldom has such emotional realism been spied in the precincts of wild magic. This alumna of the Cinderella marriage is overwhelmed, over-enchanted, and so over it. Fall under its charms, I dare you.

A darkly twisted tale of magic and marriage that's never quite what you expect. Read more...