Spoilers!
After much deliberation — I almost bought it on multiple occasions, but didn’t want to necessarily get sucked into the sequels — I finally read Freida McFadden much hyped and recently adapted 2022 thriller, The Housemaid. It helps that the decision was easy since I’m dog-sitting and my sister-in-law has the book! Almost two years ago, I read McFadden’s other 2022 book, The Inmate, and enjoyed her trademark twist-and-turns for what they were. Somehow, despite her prolific output (she had two additional books published in 2022 alone!), I’ve missed the rest of her oeuvre. The Housemaid was more predictable than I expected it to be, again, given McFadden’s trademark twists, but I thoroughly enjoyed the ride, nonetheless.
The three characters in McFadden’s book are Millie, our titular “housemaid,”; Nina Winchester, the seemingly prim and proper housewife who hired Millie; and Nina’s husband, the seemingly kind, dashingly handsome Andrew Winchester, who took over his father’s business and doubled the profits. Why did I say predictable? My thinking unfolded this way as I read: obviously, there’s only three potential villains as just listed, and since Millie is the “housemaid,” that seemed too on-the-nose, and and it didn’t take long to see in Millie and Nina’s interactions that Millie was a jerk. By making her such an unyielding jerk and then also turning out to be the main villain? No way. That left Andrew, who was too nice, too perfect, and ultimately, far too good to be true. I was right, but I certainly didn’t anticipate all the particulars, and also missed the mark on Nina’s nastiness.
First, Nina is nasty to Millie in the sense of being overly critical and gives her contradictory commands. It’s noted that she’s older than Andrew and loves to wear white. Moreover, she apparently was previously institutionalized for psychological issues, which Millie later learns stemmed from trying to drown her daughter at 5-months-old. Again, all heavy-handed if Nina turned out to be the ultimate villain, too. What about Millie? Well, we know she spent 10 years in prison, lost one of her jobs shortly thereafter, and was then evicted from her home and is living out of her car. This housemaid job, where she’s a live-in maid for the Winchesters, is her last chance. Put these two forces together — a mean, overbearing wife, and an attractive live-in maid who admits to not having had sex in 10 years and is attracted to Andrew — and the super predictable thing ends up happening: Millie and Andrew have sex. Now, this is also on the backend of Andrew and Nina learning she can’t ever get pregnant. Nina’s child, who is 9, is her child from a separate situation; Andrew wanted a child of his own. That only added to the super predictable outcome.
After Andrew kicks Nina out of the house with the intention of divorcing her — you would think it would be the other way around, given Andrew’s philandering, but Andrew kicked her out essentially for being mean to Millie —, it seems like Millie will get what she’s wants: a great man in a big house with lots of money and she can have his babies. Then, she’s locked in the attic, the same attic that was her bedroom as a maid and which she initially was skittish about the door locking from the outside. Womp, womp.
Then, the story flips to Nina’s perspective and we learn how psychopathic and awful Andrew truly is; he is indeed the main villain of the story. He imprisons and tortures Nina in the attic for any minor infractions, like leaving lightbulbs on too long, not coloring her hair, the child misbehaving, whatever he decides. The point is the punishment, not the supposed infraction. He deprives her of food and water and also forces her to do things while locked alone in the attic, hence the torture, like pepper spraying herself, or ripping her hair out. He taunts her from the other side of the door, and surveils what happens inside with a hidden camera. If she tries to tell her friends or the police, he gaslights her and everyone else that she’s psychiatrically unwell. Indeed, he’s the one who orchestrated the attempted murder of Nina’s child after the first imprisonment in the attic. The gaslighting works so well that after her institutionalization, Nina becomes convinced that perhaps she was delusional and invented the “dungeon” in the attic. Nope. He puts her back there again.
Enzo, the Italian lawncare worker, is the first person Nina can confide in, not least of all because contrary to his front, he actually speaks perfectly good English. Secondly, he has experience with this back in Italy. His sister was killed by an abusive husband. Enzo is ready to kill Andrew for Nina. What’s unfortunate is that Nina recognizes their relationship as brother-and-sister because of that backstory. There’s nothing sexual here, despite how many of the other bored housewives drool over Enzo and his big muscles. Later, though, they do have sex. Ugh, unnecessary! That ruined their dynamic, if you ask me. Nonetheless, it’s revealed that Nina’s way out, as she saw it, was to bring on a live-in maid who could replace Nina in Andrew’s eyes. Once she’s replaced, then she can escape. Even better yet, again through her rationalization, is if that person has a criminal background, as Millie does. Not just any criminal background, but murder. Millie spent 10 years in prison for killing her best friend’s would-be rapist (in self-defense, I would argue). So, not only is Nina orchestrating her replacement, as it were, but also hoping that Millie will kill Andrew.
Nina’s plan works flawlessly. Yes, Millie experienced the initial shock and horror of being imprisoned by Andrew (her “infraction” was leaving his books out, so then she had to balance three books on her stomach for three hours to be released from the attic). But then, upon her release, she uses the pepper spray left behind by Nina to turn the tables and lock Andrew in the attic. She even has his phone. In a rush of schadenfreude for this reader, she toys with him, giving him the ridiculous book punishment, then extending the hours, and toying with him some more. He’s infuriated, of course.
However, Nina doesn’t cover herself in glory initially. Enzo implores her to save Millie. How could she lure in a woman to take her place, knowing how awful Andrew is? She resists. But then she does finally seek out to help Millie by returning home. There, she finds Millie with Andrew’s dead body. He experienced a little bit more induced self-torture, including plucking out four of his teeth with pliers. As an apology of sorts, Nina tells Millie to get out of there, and she’ll deal with the police. That did switch the Prologue premise around: this is where the Prologue started, with a woman being interviewed by police with a body upstairs; I figured it was the titular housemaid, but it was Nina. Thankfully for her, a police officer on the scene is the father of Andrew’s previous girlfriend, and helps brush it all under the rug. At Andrew’s funeral, his mom, who is the abusive woman Andrew learned his tactics from and learns of the four missing teeth, thinks he got what he deserved for “not brushing his teeth.” What a mom!
A year later, Millie is interviewing for a job with a new housewife, who appears to be also suffering abuse at the hands of her husband. Millie takes the job with the insinuated understanding that she’s going to kill the husband like she did Andrew. I guess that’s what the sequels are about?!
So, where did I miss the mark? While I figured Andrew was the ultimate villain, I thought the “twist” would be that the person Millie was interacting with all this time was not Nina, but Andrew’s mother. Which is why McFadden put out those details of prim and proper, wearing white, being older than Andrew, and even the lack of affection and chemistry being shown between husband and “wife.” That it was all some sort of sick mother-son roleplaying to set up Millie. And/or that maybe the real Nina was already dead. Or at least, plotting for revenge from a distance to rescue her child. The mother switcheroo obviously didn’t prove to be the case.
Nina and Millie are flawed characters. Nina shouldn’t have put Millie in that situation, and she certainly shouldn’t have been so nasty to her as a means to an end. For her part, Millie, in addition to lying her way into the job, didn’t know the real dynamic between Nina and Andrew, so, her sleeping with Andrew, notwithstanding Nina’s nastiness, was wrong. Also, for as much schadenfreude as I experience reading about Andrew locked in the attic, the induced torture to his death is obviously wrong, but of course, that’s what makes it a titillating fictional thriller.
Overall, like I said, I enjoyed the ride McFadden took us on. An easy-breezy (the writing), effed up (the story) thrilling read. Sometimes, that’s all you need.
Milam's Musings 