The Centaur’s Wife is a strange but magical tale about life after a meteor shower. This novel is interesting and hard to explain, so please bear with me as I work through it.
First, we meet Heather, a woman with a limp who has just given birth to twin girls. She’s looking out the window of her hospital room when the meteor shower hits. Heather and her husband, B, take the twins and head to the basement with a few others survive the shower.
Next, we meet Tasha, a doctor who takes an ambulance, and anyone who wants to join her (including her wife, Annie) as they drive to a safer place.
Tasha’s crew comes to the town at the bottom of a mountain, where she meets Heather and the other survivors. This becomes the town where the bulk of the story takes place.
We learn more about both Heather and Tasha as their back stories are laced nicely throughout the book, however, we never learn why the two are connected so strongly.
If the answer is there, I’ve overlooked it, and I apologize. I will correct my previous sentence by saying that I never quite figured it out. My guess is that it has something to do with their ancestors, but it isn’t quite clear.
Connecting The Centaur’s Wife Dots
For example, if my great great great grand father was buried in a cemetery, and many many many years later, Michael Jackson’s mother is buried in the plot right beside my ancestor, would that give me a strange telepathic connection to Michael Jackson?
No, but this is fiction. And it’s also my best guess. I’m totally find with the weird connection between Heather and Tasha, even if I’m way off on my suspicions.
Between each chapter there’s a mini chapter, similar in style as a fairytale. During these mini chapters, we meet the “Centaur” – who was once a horse, and then turned into a man.
This man goes on to marry a human woman, and live quite normally until she gets pregnant. We now have centaurs, and a clueless mother who wishes for all the monsters to disappear.
The man takes his centaur children to live in the mountain beside the village, and no one dares to follow him. He then becomes a centaur as well, despite his best intentions, and then eventually more centaurs are born… let’s say through magic.
Fast forward a bit, and one of the centaur children becomes friends with Heather, and their stories entwine.
The Centaur’s Wife Is Almost There…
The mountain is safe from the meteor shower, and everywhere else things get worse. People die. People starve. Poisonous plants come to life (sort of) and healthy foods refuse to grow.
Do the centaurs help the human survivors? Do they care? Or do they make things worse?
I won’t provide any other spoilers, and I’ve tried my best to explain the story without giving too much away.
My overall opinion of this book is yet to be decided. I don’t know if I’d recommend it. I found it strange, but very well written. So I’d definitely give Amanda Leduc another shot with whatever she wants to put out – it’s a unique story, and I liked her style.
But I’m still thoroughly confused. And who is the titular character? None of the centaur’s get married. A man marries a woman before he becomes a centaur, and the story isn’t about her at all.
So really the book should have been called “The Centaur” or “Horse Becomes Man and is Briefly Married”
If you’ve read The Centaur’s Wife, I’d love to hear your opinion in the Facebook group!
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