SUNDAY 4 AUGUST 2019

WIFE AFTER DEATH

Artificial intelligence might seem like a risky plot device, but JP

Delaney pulls it off brilliantly in his Silicon Valley-set thriller ‘The

Perfect Wife’, says Clémence Michallon

Delaney delivers a sharp reflection on misogyny (Hachette/Sequoia Ziff)

★★★★☆

JP Delaney’s The Perfect Wife opens with a quote from Ovid’s Metamorphoses: “When Pygmalion saw the
way these women behaved, he was disgusted by the many flaws nature has instilled in the female sex, and
for a long time lived as a bachelor, without a wife to share his bed.” The translations vary, but the story
remains the same: Pygmalion was so disappointed by the realities of the female existence that he carved the
most perfect woman he could conceive of out of ivory.

Culture / Book review