For some bizarre reason, the library has put one of its 'crime genre' stickers on it, a symbol of a pistol. (I'm a bit baffled by the cover art too.)

In Book One, we meet Lucie a.k.a. J B Blackwood en route to collect a major literary prize. She's on a cruise ship with her auteur-husband Patrick, trying to revive their May-September marriage which is a bit rocky lately as her career blooms and his is fading. She's been sworn to secrecy by her publisher Ada, so Patrick doesn't know about the prize because, says Ada, he is a total gossip, and because he loves you so much. The plan is that she will fly on to New York for the awards ceremony at the end of the cruise.

And that's what she does, when the cruise comes to a premature end for her because Patrick is washed overboard in a ferocious storm. And then she does the publicity events at bookshops and on TV.

Yes.

That is not what a grieving widow is supposed to do.

The narration is brilliant. Are we reading the confused, distraught, occasionally drunken muddle of events from someone in shock? Or are we reading the words of a woman who mines her own life for her next novel? Or, is the whole thing a smokescreen designed to hide the truth of what happened on that night — from the authorities and from those whose love and respect she wants to keep?

To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2024/05/11/the-anniversary-2023-by-stephanie-bishop/ ( )

Author, J B Blackwood, learns that she has won a major literary prize but she can't tell anyone, even her husband Patrick, who can be a gossip, although she does tell her sister who is not really very interested and claims not to have read her books. Patrick is twenty years her senior, was her lecturer when she was a student and is the man she fell deeply in love with, her desire for him being quite without end. They have always enjoyed reading each other's work and commenting, even writing and suggesting ideas when the other one is stuck. But it is J B who is hit with the accusation that she would never have achieved so much without his help. No one ever comments on the help and writing that she has done for him.

J B books a cruise for their fourteenth wedding anniversary so that they can get away and try and overcome some of the mounting problems they seem to be having in their marriage. And so, it is onboard this ship, during a storm that Patrick goes overboard with his body turning up several days later. J B is questionned by the police but then it all goes quiet.

As we move through the book we realise what an unreliable narrator J B is, how memory and what she has written become muddled. Slowly, the layers are peeled back until we see a marriage that started with an unequal power balance and now the balance of power has shifted as wife becomes more successful than the husband.

This is a story of seduction and resentment with a very large dose of desire, both creative and sexual and a meditation on marriage. It incorporates what it means to be an author who has success - book readings, interviews and televison appearances - and where betrayal seems to lie at every turn. It as these appointments appear that we get the true desire of J B to be a winner. ( )

Very difficult to review this book. Right away it captured me: the storm, the tragedy, her writing about writing, the long well-written descriptions, and the analysis of her relationship with her film-maker husband. Somewhere in the middle it slowed down, with her time in Australia with her sister and pervy husband, and I did not care for or really believe the ending. ( )

A prize winning novelist and her film director husband go off on a cruise to celebrate their wedding anniversary. He fall overboard and dies. Or did he jump? Or was he pushed? The remainder of the book is inside the novelist's head as she comes to terms with her husband's death and its consequences. She has a disconcerting habit of noticing small, irrelevant details of her surroundings even when she is in a stressful situation that you might think demanded her attention. Her mind wanders, she digresses, uninterestingly. Despite the length of time we spend with her and the sympathy inducing situations in which she finds herself she is such a flat, unengaging character we really end up not caring what happens to her. Which is just as well given the ending. Disappointing. ( )

Thank you to Grove Press for this ARC.

This book starts out with J.B., who's a writer and her husband Patrick on a cruise. Things happen and he goes overboard. She tries to get away from the press by going to her sister's house in Australia and then abruptly leaves due to an inquiry due to Patrick's drowning. Was it her fault or not? I didn't see what happened coming believe me. Maybe to others it would be obvious but not to me.

This book is very verbose with a lot of sentences that I had to reread to try to understand them. Also, there are no quotations in it which for some reason bothers me but I knew who was talking of course.

It was a pretty big book for my liking but it went faster than I thought it would. I enjoyed it though albeit a little too long like I said. ( )