Review of ‘The Man Whose Wife Was The Moon’ by Mike Russell

An odd little novella, maybe a hallucination or a piece of magic realism. Compared to Mike Russell’s other work, this book is definitely not as strange as The Exploding Book but is stranger than Magic on the scale of strangeness.

Set in 1969, the story is about a man named Arthur, whose two great loves are the moon and his wife Molly. Some kind of hocus pocus happens and the two become one. He gets locked up because of the crazy things he does while thinking that the moon and Molly are the same entity. I’m not really sure what to make of the story. There’s a long love-letter to the moon / wife, which is a lovely idea but it doesn’t further the plot and it felt like waffle to me so I had to skim-read that bit. I liked the coincidences, as not only are the moon landings happening, both Arthur and Molly are 28 years old (the same number of years as there are days in the lunar month). There is quite a lot about the masculine and feminine qualities inside everyone, as we ascribe those qualities to the sun and moon.

I’m not sure if I’d recommend this book or not, but it’s so short that it won’t take up much of your time, so perhaps it’s worth reading after all. It’s memorable and will remind you to appreciate the moon, or your wife, or both.

Published in 2021. Thank you to Jay from StrangeBooks for the PDF copy.