Jane’s kleptomania plays beautifully with her resentment of the rich and her desire not only to be them, but to be superior to them. These are beautiful set ups to the cynical version of the story. Rochester’s ward) (and yes, the dog is fine). So – first of all, I love the first sentence of the book (“It is the absolute shittiest day for a walk”) and the fact that Adele is a dog (in the original, Adele is Mr. Eddie’s wife, Bea, and Bea’s best friend, Blanche, died in a boating accident six months ago. She begins a romance with Eddie Rochestor, a widow in the Estates. Jane wants to be rich, but also secure and respected. She tells the reader (Jane narrates in first person, present tense) very early that Jane is not her real name. She has a bit of a kleptomania problem and a desperate need to erase her past. In this contemporary take off on Jane Eyre, Jane is a dog walker for people in the rich neighborhood of Thornfield Estates. The Wife Upstairs is not a romance novel, that’s for sure, and it’s not lyrically written, but it has a masterful grasp of character and plotting and it zips right along as any good thriller should, leaving the reader madly turning pages instead of, say, emptying the dishwasher is which what I should have been doing while I finished the book instead.

The Wife Upstairs is hard to review because how it works on its own and as an adaptation depends on the many twists that unfold throughout the book. I wrote a short book called Pride Prejudice and Popcorn: TV and Film Adaptations of Pride and Prejudice, Wuthering Heights, and Jane Eyre, in which I concluded that any adaption can work as long as it stays true to the themes and characters of the source material. Jane Eyre is in my top ten favorite books and I’m very protective of it.

Book the wife upstairs