Reviewed by JD Jung)
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“She was not what she had promised, what she had led him to believe. And he couldn’t help but feel deceived. Tricked, somehow. Bitterness coursed through his bloodstream like an invisible worm consuming him from the inside.”
Dr. Carl Bingham, a middle-aged professor of British literature was content living a life of relative solitude. That all changed when the seductive twenty-seven-year-old art student, Camilla Jones, walked into his office.
Camilla was mesmerized by his eloquent reading of poetry in class and attracted to him because of his age. She was determined to have him and even with Carl’s resistance, she won out.
Though their ages were decades apart, Carl regarded Camilla as wise beyond her years. The two married not long into their relationship and managed to fulfill each other’s needs for twenty years, or it seemed.
The Professor’s Wife takes us back and forth from when they met to the present. Initially we know that he is quite old, and she is suffering from physical pain and painkillers. However, we figure out that there is so much more to their lives. As the problems surface, we know the story will become quite disturbing as we wait for the other shoe to drop. It finally does, but not in the way I expected.
This novella takes us to dark places but deals with very real issues. From mental illness and lifelong emotional pain that we could discuss for days, author Marina DelVecchio expresses their story with descriptive and gorgeous prose, carefully weaving in the intense romance and sex between life’s bleak reality. At only 113 pages, she fully develops her characters, and we finally understand the couple and what brought them to where they are at this point.
For those who are not afraid to delve into the eeriness of real life and explore the human condition, The Professor’s Wife is for you.
