The Angry Wives Club
by Gabbie Stroud
Allen & Unwin
Shellwater Bay, on the South Coast of New South Wales, is postcard picture‑perfect. However, despite the peaceful small community being at least 400 km from anything remotely metropolitan, some of the women’s lives are far from idyllic.
The 6am Sweat Class becomes the meeting place for three women who swap stories about the silent bargains they have made to keep the peace in their relationships, as each generation of women has their cross to bear.
Heather had been married to her high‑school sweetheart for 26 years when he announced that he was leaving… over the phone, while it was on speaker to the rest of the gym class.
Heather’s mother’s advice was that happy men don’t stray and she needed to make him happy with a clean house, cooked meals, and sex. Heather was good at keeping up appearances, but she slammed the medicine ball against the wall in fury.
Joany was trying to defy age by pedalling with built‑up rage. “If she hadn’t been riding a stationary bike, she’d be halfway around the world by now.” After fifty‑something years of marriage, she realised that some fights weren’t worth fighting, but she’d never had a chance to share all the things she’d been putting up with.
Steph really loved her husband, but she struggled to care for her three young children with a man‑child who thought that “helping out” meant co‑opting his mother.
Gabbie Stroud didn’t have to look far to find inspiration for this book. Her own life, and the lives of women she knows and loves, gave her plenty to work with. The Angry Wives Club is all about eventually acknowledging the behaviour being tolerated, and calling it out without having to break too many fingernails.
Sometimes it is a low‑level annoyance, sometimes the violence escalates, and sometimes it becomes life‑threatening. The women’s tolerance is wearing thin, and they support each other—and have an enormous amount of fun—making daring changes to their environment.
Eventually they decide that some of the men in their community need to be taught lessons on how to treat women, but there doesn’t seem to be a way without breaking a few laws. Fortunately, the law—or karma—wins out in this highly entertaining novel.
Lezly Herbert
