The idea for Irish writer Caroline Madden’s debut novel, The Marriage Vendetta, began life many years ago. Madden was interested in writing historical fiction when she came across the story of Elizabeth Linley, an English soprano who was one of the most celebrated singers of the 1700s. When Linley married the famous Irish playwright and politician Richard Brinsley Sheridan, he banned her from singing because he felt having a wife on the stage would damage his gentlemanly aspirations.
Madden wrote a novel based on Linley’s story, but publishers deemed the ending too sad for them to publish. And so she went back to the drawing board and had the idea to transpose the character of Linley to a contemporary fictional setting. The result is The Marriage Vendetta and it has already been sold in Ireland, Britain and the US.
The book opens with the meek Eliza, a former concert pianist who has just moved to Dublin with her playwright husband, Richard. He has taken over the Blind Alley theatre and is working on a new play. Eliza meanwhile looks after their daughter, Mara, while her custom-made piano sits mute under its dust cover, an apt metaphor for Eliza’s ambitions.
[ Caroline Madden: ‘My luck turned when I created a female protagonist seething with quiet resentment’ ]
Their marriage is already buckling under Richard’s selfishness and Eliza’s own resentments when she receives a compromising photo of Richard with another woman. She hires a mysterious marriage counsellor called Ellen Early, who uses unorthodox methods to get results. Each week she gives Eliza increasingly comedic tasks in an apparent attempt to save her marriage.
A host of enjoyable peripheral characters add to the mystery and humour. There is the shallow Gina, a status-hungry social influencer, the boorish finance-bro Johnny, the movie-star siren Sasha, and George, a more relatable example of the working-mother juggle.
The plot centres on Eliza’s attempts to find out who the mystery woman in the photo is, and whether her husband is actually having an affair, but the action also forces Eliza to confront her own long-buried desires and to face the realities of her marriage.
The book is being marketed as Fleabag meets Bad Sisters – it’s not quite that, but it is a charming and original debut, with plenty of arch humour, an unexpected dash of Irish folklore, and a subtle call to arms for doormats everywhere to pull in the welcome sign.
