BookBrowse Reviews Evil Genius by Claire Oshetsky

BookBrowse:

A teenage bride gains the confidence to stand up to her abusive husband and start shaping her own life.

This review is available to non-members for a limited time. For access to our digital magazine, free books,and other benefits, become a member today.

Nineteen-year-old Celia is gentle and naive, and her older husband, Drew, likes her that way. The pair met two years earlier, in 1972, while her mother was dying in the hospital where he worked as a scrub tech, and Celia went straight from dependent teenager to bride, never having to fend for herself. Her one bit of self-sufficiency is her job in the billing department of a phone company, but Drew doesn't like it if she works too late. Drew doesn't like a lot of things, actually. Celia doesn't see him as abusive—she thinks he's just keeping her under control.

Then something happens that sends shockwaves through Celia's life. An executive from her company is shot dead by her husband after he catches her in bed with another man. Celia becomes fixated on this soap-operatic act of violence, and her own life suddenly seems quite boring. She starts creating bigger and bigger waves: flirting with a creepy caller at work, staying out late, and even buying a knife at a pawn shop. But Celia doesn't understand what she's setting in motion—or that her quiet life is about to explode.

Claire Oshetsky's Evil Genius is narrated by a present-day Celia, now in her 70s, who is full of both love and criticism for her younger self. This narrative perspective allows the reader to be in Celia's head while also getting a more zoomed-out point of view—and often some foreshadowing. Recalling one morning with Drew, the older Celia reflects: "Has it already crossed the girl's mind back on that gorgeous, sun-dazzle morning, as she gazes at her husband's tranquil sleeping face, that she wants him dead? It has not crossed that girl's mind. Not once. Not in a million years. Not until later that same day, anyway." Her voice is often a wry, irony-infused one, born from decades of hard-won wisdom.

Drew feels like a realistic portrayal of an abusive spouse, someone who Celia can mentally justify staying with. The abuse begins as controlling behavior that she mistakes for protectiveness, progressing over the course of the relationship into sharp barbs that eventually escalate into violence and threats. Internally, she tries to brush off his behavior with the kinds of excuses victims of intimate partner violence often make to themselves, like holding tightly to the fact that he does not hit her, even though he does push her and hold her down. On a deeper level, she knows this behavior is not OK, but his quasi-parental role in her life makes her even more dependent on her husband than the average woman in the 1970s would be. Drew swooped into Celia's life at a particularly vulnerable time, when she was 17 and about to be orphaned. Celia recalls thinking that, at nearly 30, he was too old for her, but her ailing mother was so pleased by the pairing that she talked herself out of her doubts.

What makes this book so delightful to read is watching Celia come into her true self. Over the course of the narrative, she grows bolder, more confident, and even a bit unhinged. One gets the sense that she is recovering her earlier, childhood self, before she was socialized to be a well-behaved lady.

It's perhaps ironic that the event that inspires Celia toward greater independence is the killing of a woman by her spouse. There is a risk, after all, that she might someday suffer the same fate. But Celia seems to picture herself not as the victim in this scenario, but as the one holding the gun, the person taking vengeance against someone who's wronged her. The idea of being the one in charge, of holding life and death in her hands, excites her on an almost erotic level.

Celia's eccentric personality, and the unusual choices she makes later in the book, place this novel within the growing "weird girl" subgenre of literary fiction. This lends it an edge that might attract some readers. But at the core of this story is one as old as time: a man who wields his physical strength and societal power against his spouse. Because the novel is narrated by an older Celia, there is a comfortable sense from the beginning that her story is not going to end tragically. And so the reader gets to follow along with anticipation, knowing that all of the ups and downs, even the most dramatic ones, will lead Celia to her well-deserved happy ending.

This review first ran in the February 25, 2026 issue of BookBrowse Recommends.