Learwife is a strange nightmare of a book that hooks you in and won’t let go. The prose at points physically affected me. It creates an oppressive miasma that makes you feel as trapped as the Learwife of the title. In odd ways, it takes the works of Shakespeare, Camus, Kafka and, Beckett, remixing them into something stunning.

It is lyrical and compelling. As an exploration of grief and how that state of emotion colours all our memories. Learwife seamlessly veers from our protagonist boasting rhapsodically about her achievements as a queen, wife and mother to threnodies about the harm she caused and was caused to her by those she loved.

Learwife never shies away from how cruel and unfair life is. My reading of the book is that it is about a character trying to make sense of pain and reaching for those joyful moments that give us pleasure or satisfaction.

It plays with enigmas and ambiguity. How many of Learwife’s memories are accurate? Is the Convent real or a metaphor for limbo?

A brilliant book and one that I think I’ll come back to.

BUY IT here. They’ll kick me some money