The Wife Upstairs
The Wife Upstairs
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Freida McFadden on The Wife Upstairs
In her own words: quotes and insights from the author.Why she wrote it
A crowded genre, a lineage claimedWhen readers began drawing comparisons between this book and Colleen Hoover’s Verity, McFadden didn’t dodge the conversation. She addressed it directly in a written statement, and her response did more than defend the book: it placed her work inside a specific literary tradition she was consciously drawing from.
I had heard about her book before publishing, and I was a little concerned, but friends told me that there are only so many plots out there and everybody makes each idea their own. I can guarantee there are NO pieces of dialogue that are the same — that would be impossible. Perhaps Hoover is also a fan of *Rebecca* and *Jane Eyre* and *Gone Girl*, and we were both inspired by the same pieces. [paraphrased from audio]
Naming du Maurier’s gothic house, Brontë’s confined wife, and Flynn’s unreliable narrators in a single breath is its own argument about where McFadden understands herself to be working.
McFadden has been candid about why she resists explaining what sparked any individual book. Her FAQ page turns the question itself into a small window on the writing life.
Every author I have talked to agrees that our least favorite question to be asked is, ‘What inspired you to write Book X?’ First of all, it is a question we are asked constantly... Also, with any book, the motivation can come from many different places, and sometimes we can’t even remember what it was.
How she wrote it
Brain injury, no outline, and a twist planned in silenceVictoria Barnett’s condition in this book, the partial recovery, the blurry communication, the uncertainty about how much she truly perceives, required a clinical accuracy that McFadden didn’t need to fake. She is a practicing physician whose specialty is brain injury, and she has described exactly where that expertise stops and starts.
If I do write about a doctor or something medical, I don’t need to research it because I’ve lived it. But it doesn’t mean I know everything medical — I only know my own field very well.
McFadden’s drafting method is built around holding everything in her head rather than on paper, which shapes how long a book spends in silence before any words are committed. The process for The Wife Upstairs followed the same pattern she uses for every novel.
I come up with an idea including a twist in advance. I plan it out only in my head for a couple of months, then I spend a couple of weeks banging out a first draft. I don’t stop, just write. If it seems bad or I feel stuck, I just write. I keep telling myself that I’ll fix it later.
Her standard for a working twist is exacting, and The Wife Upstairs is structured around it. The novel keeps both Victoria and Adam in play as possible antagonists for its full length before the resolution arrives, which is exactly the condition her theory demands.
I think it’s not enough for the killer to be the person you’d least suspect. It has to be someone that didn’t even cross your mind for a millisecond. And yet, at the same time, it also has to be someone that is meaningful. The killer can’t be the victim’s father’s brother’s best friend’s college roommate, because he was mad about the electric bill being split unevenly.
Sylvia’s choices across the novel, moving into a stranger’s house, sleeping with her employer, trusting a document that may be a manipulation, are the engine of the plot. McFadden has given a short, flat answer for why she writes female characters who keep making those choices.
If they made only good decisions, the story would probably be over within twenty pages!
What she wants us to sit with
Questions the plot refuses to answerMcFadden published discussion questions for this book on her own website, and they do not point toward resolution. They ask whether Sylvia’s affair was wrong, why women stay in relationships like Victoria’s, and what moral obligations survive a marriage shaped by injury and possible abuse. The character philosophy behind those questions appears in how she has described what she wants from the people she writes.
I love writing morally grey characters. I’m intrigued by the idea that a person can be good deep down but still do bad things. Or a person can be mostly ‘evil’ yet still have sympathetic qualities. Someone who does nothing but good things is not interesting to read about, in my opinion!
The ending of The Wife Upstairs has divided readers precisely over whether what happens to Adam constitutes justice. McFadden has stated what she believes fiction can deliver that life cannot, which is the lens her endings are designed through.
My general feeling is that in life, people rarely get exactly what they deserve. But in art, you can dole out that poetic justice.
Whether that poetic justice lands on the right character at the end of this book is the question readers finish it still arguing about, which may be exactly the point.