Books

Saman Shad
The Sex Lives of Married Women

Saman Shad’s The Sex Lives of Married Women begins with a provocative question: how do marriages, born from hope and potential, survive the constant measuring – by tradition, friendship groups, culture, class, children – against imagined standards of contentment and conformity?

Structured as a series of linked stories, the novel moves between the lives of women in Sydney navigating identity and intimacy in the shadow of middle age. These women share some surface commonalities but face different issues and cultural expectations. What unites them is a sense of flux: they are not quite where they thought they’d end up, nor quite sure how they got here.

The prose often leans heavily on dialogue to convey emotional beats and cultural context, at times showing the author’s hand more clearly than the characters’ true voices. The novel is at its most compelling when it trusts its characters to carry meaning through lived experience rather than overt commentary. As their stories entwine and slouch towards the end, the emotional complexity deepens with more resonance than the initial awkwardness of expository dialogue.

The standout character is Rani, a reserved housewife grappling with shame and isolation, whose storyline offers the richest emotional terrain. Shad’s writing shines here as she finds more texture – Rani’s dilemmas are specific, her inner life convincingly rendered, with growth that feels more realistic and comes with a backstory so detailed, so relatable, it will give you second-hand anxiety. Other characters are drawn with empathy but have less narrative depth or realism, and some of the novel’s observations on modern womanhood can land with more force
than finesse.

The novel’s strength is in its depiction of friendship, especially among women wrestling with who they used to be and who they’ve become. The conversations – funny, intimate, slightly desperate, annoyed but trying not to be at that nice north shore restaurant – capture the strange mix of nostalgia and disorientation that often shadows middle age.

The complexity of these friendships plays out against the background of a common frustration: these women aren’t performing their rebellions in secret. Their husbands fail to truly listen to or even see them – an invisibility that haunts the narrative, tapping into a common experience for many middle-aged women.

By the final chapters, the stories converge into something more grounded and generous. While The Sex Lives of Married Women sometimes strains under the weight of its own ambitions, it ultimately offers an energetic sprint on race, choice, change and the quiet rebellions hidden in plain sight.

Penguin, 320pp, $34.99

This article was first published in the print edition of The Saturday Paper on May 3, 2025 as "The Sex Lives of Married Women".

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By Saman Shad

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