Judith Sullivan is a writer in London, originally from Baltimore. She is working on a crime series set in Paris. Fluent in French, she’s pretty good with English and has conversational Italian and German and 20+ years in Leeds improved her Yorkshire speak.
Perfect Ten could have slipped into Gone Girl or Girl on the Train territory, thankfully instead it follows a road less travelled.
The novel is constructed as a series of one-way conversations between Caroline Atkinson and her errant spouse Jack. She undertakes this in a home bursting with useless purchases that embody her loss of control over baser instincts. She lives in filth complete with clutter and vodka; propelled forward by a primal need to make Jack pay. She feels he needs to pay dearly for his affairs, his abandonment and worst of all, for taking the couple’s two young children from their mother.
With each chapter, Caroline, a psychiatrist by trade, sinks further and further into a sinkhole of hatred, obsession and promiscuity. When she is not plotting and scheming ways to drag Jack down to her level, she picks up guys at a nearby Premier Inn.
Her main activity is using social media to paint Jack as a liar, cheat and an “all around creep” despite his good-looks and professional success. The specifics of her campaign involve multiple cell-phone numbers, bogus Facebook accounts and something to do with the neighbour’s dog. Complex though her digital wars may be, the plotting and obsession ring true - I suspect, to anyone who’s been dumped. The revenge attacks eventually gain a rhythm of their own, independent of the goal of humiliating the ex-lover.
I’ve never waged such a campaign, but I empathized with the frenzy and paranoia of Caroline’s anti-Jack rage. One of the major instruments Caroline deploys is detailed documentation Jack himself compiled on his conquests over the years. His rating of the women on a scale of one to ten gives the book its title. It also adds an element of purpose to Caroline’s quest – finding out who if anyone scored the full ten points on the Jack-Scale. Naturally, she enlists the support of other Jack ex-partners (including those who were ‘dumped’), with a view to making his humiliation about more than just Caroline.
The Perfect Ten dust jacket links the novel with the #MeToo movement. Though Jack Atkinson is no Harvey Weinstein, but he is a louse and a scoundrel, so the tale of his downfall (or non-downfall) is compelling.
Ward’s writing is so strong that even the nuttier aspects of the revenge plot (hiding a cell-phone in the oven) gain credibility over time. Disbelief was occasionally suspended, though it is not clear how Caroline pays for all her Amazon orders (nor is it explained how she manages to dupe her workmates into ignoring her mania and drinking).
All in all, these sisters doing it for themselves take the reader on a somewhat bonkers, but wildly enjoyable journey.
Editor's Note : eBook release July 5 2018 / PB release April 4 2019
