Wish Her Safe at Home

By: Stephen Benatar

Narrated by: Elizabeth Knowelden

Rachel Waring is deliriously happy. Out of nowhere, a great-aunt leaves her a Georgian mansion in another city—and she sheds her old life without delay. Gone is her dull administrative job, her mousy wardrobe, her downer of a roommate. She will live as a woman of leisure, devoted to beauty, creativity, expression, and love. Once installed in her new quarters, Rachel plants a garden, takes up writing, and impresses everyone she meets with her extraordinary optimism. But as Rachel sings and jokes the days away, her new neighbors begin to wonder if she might be taking her transformation just a bit too far.

In Wish Her Safe at Home, Stephen Benatar finds humor and horror in the shifting region between elation and mania. His heroine could be the next-door neighbor of the Beales of Grey Gardens or a sister to Jane Gardam’s oddball protagonists, but she has an ebullient charm all her own.

©2010 Stephen Benatar (P)2022 Blackstone Publishing

Second hand embarrassment!

I’ve never read a book like this before and I want to go back and reread it to figure out when Rachel goes crazy! Did Roger really seduce and impregnate her at the end? Did she hate, love, or not care about her mother? Was she a good singer or was she tone-deaf? So many holes, so many questions, so scary to think how quickly someone can go happily insane!