After I read The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, I instantly pressed play on the short story titled “Evidence of the Affair”. This novella takes place when Carrie finds letters from another woman to her husband. Now that she has discovered her husband is having an affair, she contacts her husband’s mistress’s husband, David (that’s a mouth full). Though Carrie desperately wanted to be everything her husband needs, she ended up receiving everything she could want and more in the end.
Initially, I was wondering if she would be a woman scorned and ready to make her cheating husband’s life full of misery. I assumed there would be plotting and scheming going on. Which there was, but I thought it would be in the way of confronting the cheating husband. The somberness to the story made for an open heart experience and I just adored what came from everything that transpired, and to top it off the ending was heart melting. This woman spent years doubting herself and yearning for the love and affection from her cheating husband all to find out that she was never the problem. Yes of course he is clearly the problem for stepping out on her but the fact that she was able to have a breakthrough in the end really just allows for her to step into who she is and her value as a person.
If you plan on reading this book do not read any further, there will be spoilers ahead.
As I stated before I thought this book would be about a woman preparing to destroy her cheating husband in every way possible. The last thing I expected was for her heart to become whole again by the husband of her husband’s mistress. This book was not even shocking, or had multiple twists and turns. It was everything a heart could need to open up to what love and healing would look like. And not only that, a woman finding confidence in who she is and learning that she indeed, is not the problem.
Carrie’s husband was abusive in the worse way, mental and emotional. The letters he wrote to his mistress saying how much of a woman she is simply because she could bare children was heartbreaking, so in the end when Carrie did have a child and it was by David, I think it was the ultimate smack in the face for Carrie’s husband to know that he was the problem in every way. From not being a loving husband to him being the very reason they don’t have children.
I think it is safe to safe Taylor Jenkins Reid has made a fan of me. I am a lover of poetry and there is something within the words that she writes that awakens my heart to hear more than what is said.
