The Husband's Secret by Liane Moriarty

I've been meaning to read this book for a long time; I've read 150 pages and I've decided to throw in the towel.  I just compared notes with a friend about how many books on a list of banned books we'd read:  she'd read 30, and I'd read only 9 and two halves.

And too busy.  After I'd gotten to the 150 page mark, I was actually very interested in finishing.  But life intervened, and I was very busy for the next week.

This is a book about a married woman with children, and the protagonist of the novel is both a happy person and a person who inner consciousness we're allowed to share.  Cecilia is constantly making observations about her husband and her children that I think will be very familiar to other mothers. She, too, is nearly run off her feet and doesn't have much opportunity, I don't think, to think very deeply about what it is that she's doing and how she feels about things and herself.

I recently chatted with a co-worker who had just finished the book and learned that by the end of the book, a lot has happened, a lot has changed, and Cecilia has had opportunity enough to have a lot to think about.

The book is well-plotted, suspenseful, and very importantly, relatable.  It is an entertaining book.

This book has proved to be SO popular.  People are still taking about it.

I see that new editions of her earlier books have been published.  Those are The Hypnotist's Love Story, What Alice Forgot, Three Wishes, and Last Anniversary.  Her latest book is Big Little Lies, which has also been a bestseller.

Yellow Eyes of Crocodiles by Katherine Pancol

Josephine is a harried Parisian housewife.  She has a job working as a researcher at a French agency, and while it doesn't pay well it's a lifesaver because her husband, Antoine, has lost his job as a hunting guide. Antoine is demoralized his job search.  After he's been unemployed for a year, she discovers he's having an affair and kicks him out.

Shortly after, her sister comes to her with a proposition:  write a novel about the 12th century and she, the sister, will do the promotional tour and pass off the work as her own.  The book becomes a big success, in part because Iris, the sister, is so good at promoting herself.  Her promotional tour is a bit of a spoof of celebrity culture.

I can see why this book has been a bestseller in Europe; it's very entertaining.  I don't think that there's any way in which it's less accessible to American readers than European except that the place names and character names are unfamiliar.  Lots of familiar celebrities make an appearance:  some children have an "Imagine" game that involves singing John Lennon's song "Imagine"; Diana, Princess of Wales, is referred to several times.  I think I recall that French celebrities are mentioned once or twice but not more than English-language ones - I think Meryl Streep, playing Isak Dinesen in Out of Africa is also mentioned.

The story is a wish fulfillment story; middle-aged woman is left by her man (although she invites him to leave when she discovers that he is having an affair) and, gradually, starts to find ways to cope with his absence and to rebuild her life.  She starts going to the hairdresser, losing some weight and getting herself a new man.

She also has a teenage daughter that speaks to her in a really cruel way; her mother is also rather critical.

Globalization is explicitly touched on just a few times:  one character bemoans the seeming inability of some companies to "change with the times"; another company survives by purchasing a Chinese company; and of course, the whole plot is set in motion by the protagonist's husband leaving her and that really happens because he loses his job.  He spends a year looking for a job and he begins an affair with a local hairdresser.
Frankly, although this novel is supposed to be a novel about female empowerment, it's possible to make an argument that if the lead character not kicked out her husband in a fit of fury she wouldn't have had such great success but she'd still be married and her children would be happier.

I think this novel was published in France in 2006, so it's not new.