I just finished reading a delightful novel I am pleased to recommend: The Husband’s Secret, by Liane Moriarty. The book is laugh-out-loud funny, yet treats some quite serious events. I especially enjoyed the difference between how each of the main characters (all women) thinks of herself and how others view her. My mental images of the characters kept changing until I could resolve all these facets, which ultimately combine into intricately detailed and complex characterizations, fictional people who seem very real.

Two of the main characters are in the child-raising time of their lives, while a third is a widow with a grown son and grandson. I came to like all three of them. While the jacket review cites one husband’s secret as the source of the title, there are many secrets in this book, which has some aspects of a mystery (an unsolved homicide is one of them). The reactions of the characters to the revelations of the secrets are interesting at first, and then evolve, and precipitate events that intermesh the characters’ lives in unexpected but plausible ways.

For me, the ending of a novel is the most important part. Many writers claim their characters dictate the plot, but I think the author has a role in it, and I don’t enjoy a book with an ending that is wrong for the character. A good ending can be sad, just not inconsistent. The last Anne Tyler book I read was Ladder of Days, because I strongly disagreed with the ending. I was caught up in the book, then felt betrayed at the end, and furious. I had been a fan up until then, but felt I could no longer trust Anne, and did not want to repeat the experience. Plenty of people disagree with me on this, by the way.

In any case, there were situations to resolve in The Husband’s Secret, and I had some ideas of how they might be resolved while reading. I was mostly wrong, but I was delighted by the resolutions, which I thought made sense and were clever. Then there is an Epilogue that is like having double dessert, because it not only tells us what happens to the characters in the future, it describes what would have happened to them in some other future if events had turned out differently. Regrets and second-guessing are futile; you simply can’t know what would have happened had you done something differently.

This is my first Liane Moriarty book. I hope she will not turn out to be another John Irving. I loved The World According to Garp, so I read about six more of his books, and none came close to being as good. He used many of the same components in each book, but did not achieve synergy, an aspect of writing that I suspect cannot be taught.