Good morning everyone,
Today’s review will discuss “The Miniature Wife,” a short story by Manuel Gonzales. Per his faculty biography, Mr. Gonzales has taught literature since fall 2018 at Bennington College, a private liberal arts college in Bennington, Virginia. Riverhead Books published “The Miniature Wife and Other Stories” on January 10, 2013, and Gonzales’s novel “The Regional Office is Under Attack!” in 2016. Additionally, an audio story of another Gonzales novella, called “Neon Lights,” appeared in 2021.
Deadline reported in late March 2024 that The Miniature Wife was being adapted into a “Dramedy” series for Peacock. This is the point in time where the story came to my attention. Previously shrunken women (SW) fans discussed Gonzales’s work at forums like The Minimizer’s SW Forum (before it went off-line) and at Daddy’s Dollhouse. The oldest Giantess City thread about this series started on March 31, 2024.
Regarding the live-action series, Syrus Durham (a.k.a. Scidram) helpfully compiled all of the known data and made educated guesses about the plot details. Read this PDF for the lowdown.
Be advised that this review will only discuss The Miniature Wife, not any of the other short stories in the anthology. This fictional tale is brief, only 21 pages on a Kindle reader, therefore this review will disclose some important details. So, for anyone who does not want to see spoilers let me note for them that I enjoyed it, but would stop short of recommending it to a broad audience. It leaves a lot of questions unanswered and features an acrimonious relationship, to put that mildly. Ambiguous and cruel, but interesting. Worth a read if you do not mind horrific imagery and a bleak ending.
Alright, do not read further if you want to avoid spoilers!
Told from the husband’s perspective the action begins after he has already miniaturized his wife down to “… the height of a coffee mug.” However, despite personally witnessing her sudden miniaturization he did not know how it happened nor how to reverse it. His ignorance was puzzling. This could have made for an interesting mystery, but no further information was ever provided. The author may have meant to imply that the husband was an unreliable narrator. The husband’s job was to develop processes to make things smaller which his staff would then test. He claimed that he was “… quite good at my job.” If his self-assessment and extensive experience with miniaturization was accurate then he was an expert on shrinking things. However, despite this knowledge and skill plus a stated desire he was unable to return his wife to normal stature after multiple attempts. If there was some marital friction, say if they were in the process of divorcing, then he would have a motive and it could indicate that despite his protestations to the contrary he actually did know how she shrank. Possibly he was upset with her and thus did not want to restore her, but was unwilling to admit this culpability to the reader.
There were signs that their relationship was in poor condition prior to the incident. As soon as she began to shrink the wife threw a purse at her husband instead of asking for help. Maybe he had a shrink ray gun in his hands so from her perspective it was obvious that he was responsible, but readers will never know because the cause was never explained.
The husband claimed that when she was normal she often had a “… hard, reproachful look in her eyes” and an “… angry or disappointed set of her jaw.” After the miniaturizing she had sex with a shrunken man, but it was not clear if she would have broken their marriage vows so callously when she was regular height.
Other mysteries include how she was able, at the stature of only three inches, to kill a cat then drag its corpse to place it on top of her husband’s bed while he slept. The cat must have been several times her size and was a dangerous threat, having evolved as an obligate carnivore. Conceivably, she had enhanced strength beyond what one would expect, but this went unexplored.
Gonzales’s original story was quite violent and ended with the husband and wife set to kill one another after slaying multiple family pets and a co-worker. A pet bird ate a tiny man, the tiny wife somehow slayed a pet cat, the minuscule spouse blinded her husband in one eye, and the narrative concluded with the husband shrunk to his wife’s size hoping he would live long enough to choke her to death. So, this might need a rewrite or two to become a TV comedy.
Overall, I think that the Peacock version will be similar in name only. A literal adaptation would be too bleak for mainstream audiences, but would instead better suit users of horror streaming service Shudder. Based on the violent nature of the source material and the fact that the Peacock blog classified the show as an “original comedy” I believe that major changes will be made to an extent where one might wonder why they bothered to pay for the rights. The idea that “a wife shrinks” does not feel unique, see 1982’s “The Incredible Shrinking Woman” for a previous take on that concept, but then I live in the size community. Perhaps it looks groundbreaking to those on the outside. Time will tell how much of the narrative is changed.
In an otherwise unrelated article about skin care for NewBeauty magazine, lead actress Elizabeth Banks said Miniature Wife was “… going to premiere on Peacock this April, and we get to promote it during the Winter Olympics.” The Winter Olympics are scheduled for February 2026 so keep an eye out for trailers coming soon. Additionally, New York Public Radio recorded a significantly altered 10-minute long audio version of the Miniature Wife which you can listen to by clicking here.
Next up is a look at some giant couple videos from GiantGhost. Until then, keep your wives happy and keep yourself growing!
This review was written by SolomonG and is protected under copyright law.
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There She Grows 