Wife by Charlotte Mendelson

When Zoe moves in with Penny, their relationship looks perfect; after all, everyone wants a wife. But this is the story of how love can become a disaster .
 
Wife is a beautifully observed and corruscating novel about the joys of passionate love and motherhood, and the choices that have to be made when romantic love turns toxic.  Set in the world of London academia, both past and present, this queer love story is  heart-breaking and funny, profound and gripping, as it takes the reader from the end of a relationship to its beginning, and back again.
-----
'A brilliant and blackly comic study of narcissistic dysfunction . . . Gimlet-eyed, sharp-tongued, blisteringly precise, it crackles with female fire and fury' ― The Guardian


.