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The Same Woman
The Same Woman explores women’s relationships and how they can be affected by our culture, for better or worse. Ruby returns to the scene of a recent heartbreak, only to find the woman her lover left her for around every corner. This woman Ruby has never even spoken to comes to symbolize everything bad that’s ever happened. Soon though, she is faced with the unbearable revelation that she and this woman might be more alike than she can believe.
120 pages, Paperback
First published May 15, 2007
About the author
Thea Lim
3 books182 followersThea Lim is the author of An Ocean of Minutes, which was shortlisted for the 2018 Scotiabank Giller Prize. Thea Lim's writing has been published by Granta, The Paris Review, The Guardian, The Globe and Mail, Salon, The Southampton Review and others. She holds an MFA from the University of Houston and she previously served as nonfiction editor at Gulf Coast. She grew up in Singapore and lives in Toronto with her family, where she is a professor of creative writing.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
June 19, 2010
An intense little story of a woman who struggles with the ideals she thought she had, only to find herself stuck in just a predicament that tests her relationships with men, women, and herself.
April 15, 2026
I was drawn to this novel for its premise: a woman trying to rebuild intimacy with a partner after betrayal, while obsessively circling the “other woman.” That psychological terrain is fertile and volatile. But for me, the execution felt inconsistent and ultimately underdeveloped.
Ruby’s interiority is vivid in flashes—especially in the memory of suggesting an open relationship. The self-recrimination there is sharp and painfully specific. But as the story progresses, her spiralling thoughts begin to feel repetitive rather than cumulative. We return again and again to the coffee shop, to watching Frankie laugh, to Ruby narrating her disgust and jealousy, yet the emotional register doesn’t meaningfully shift. The scenes reiterate her fixation without escalating it or transforming it. I kept waiting for a turn: a confrontation, a rupture, a new layer of self-awareness that would alter the dynamic. Instead, the pattern remains largely static.
The timeline and structure also feel unstable in a way that doesn’t always serve the story. Flashbacks bleed into the present frequently, but without enough anchoring to clarify what has actually changed between Ruby and Tariq. We’re told they’re “trying again,” yet their present-day relationship feels strangely thin—more summarized than shown. Outside of a few tense exchanges, we don’t see enough of their rebuilt intimacy (or its fragility) to understand why Ruby is still choosing him. The emotional stakes feel lopsided: we deeply understand her pain, but not her attachment.
Secondary characters add texture but sometimes diffuse focus. Conversations with Isi and Octavia gesture toward larger themes—internalized misogyny, the performance of the “cool girl,” women being taught to disappear from their own needs—yet these ideas are often stated outright rather than dramatized. The social commentary occasionally edges into essayistic explanation, which undercuts the rawness of Ruby’s experience instead of deepening it.
Perhaps my biggest frustration was the lack of forward motion. The novel circles jealousy, shame, and comparison with intensity, but it doesn’t fully interrogate them. Ruby recognizes the irrationality of blaming Frankie, yet that recognition rarely leads to action or transformation. By the end, I didn’t feel that Ruby had fundamentally shifted her understanding of herself or her desires.
There are passages of perceptive writing and emotional intelligence here, and the premise carries real weight. I just wanted greater structural clarity, deeper exploration of motivation, and a more decisive emotional evolution. Instead, the novel felt like it was hovering around its core conflict without fully breaking through it.
Ruby’s interiority is vivid in flashes—especially in the memory of suggesting an open relationship. The self-recrimination there is sharp and painfully specific. But as the story progresses, her spiralling thoughts begin to feel repetitive rather than cumulative. We return again and again to the coffee shop, to watching Frankie laugh, to Ruby narrating her disgust and jealousy, yet the emotional register doesn’t meaningfully shift. The scenes reiterate her fixation without escalating it or transforming it. I kept waiting for a turn: a confrontation, a rupture, a new layer of self-awareness that would alter the dynamic. Instead, the pattern remains largely static.
The timeline and structure also feel unstable in a way that doesn’t always serve the story. Flashbacks bleed into the present frequently, but without enough anchoring to clarify what has actually changed between Ruby and Tariq. We’re told they’re “trying again,” yet their present-day relationship feels strangely thin—more summarized than shown. Outside of a few tense exchanges, we don’t see enough of their rebuilt intimacy (or its fragility) to understand why Ruby is still choosing him. The emotional stakes feel lopsided: we deeply understand her pain, but not her attachment.
Secondary characters add texture but sometimes diffuse focus. Conversations with Isi and Octavia gesture toward larger themes—internalized misogyny, the performance of the “cool girl,” women being taught to disappear from their own needs—yet these ideas are often stated outright rather than dramatized. The social commentary occasionally edges into essayistic explanation, which undercuts the rawness of Ruby’s experience instead of deepening it.
Perhaps my biggest frustration was the lack of forward motion. The novel circles jealousy, shame, and comparison with intensity, but it doesn’t fully interrogate them. Ruby recognizes the irrationality of blaming Frankie, yet that recognition rarely leads to action or transformation. By the end, I didn’t feel that Ruby had fundamentally shifted her understanding of herself or her desires.
There are passages of perceptive writing and emotional intelligence here, and the premise carries real weight. I just wanted greater structural clarity, deeper exploration of motivation, and a more decisive emotional evolution. Instead, the novel felt like it was hovering around its core conflict without fully breaking through it.
April 4, 2023
Gorgeously written.
I really enjoyed that though this book is focusing on Ruby, we get small slivers into how the people in her life are feeling and perceiving.
Quick read, some of the messages about why women are conditioned to hate each other were a bit too on the nose, but this book was published a little while ago so that's forgivable.
I'm not sure if the book is set in Toronto but it certainly felt like Toronto, and the city exists as a character looming everywhere much like Frankie, which I really enjoyed.
I really enjoyed that though this book is focusing on Ruby, we get small slivers into how the people in her life are feeling and perceiving.
Quick read, some of the messages about why women are conditioned to hate each other were a bit too on the nose, but this book was published a little while ago so that's forgivable.
I'm not sure if the book is set in Toronto but it certainly felt like Toronto, and the city exists as a character looming everywhere much like Frankie, which I really enjoyed.
January 25, 2022
Read this because I love “Ocean of Minutes”. Read that instead.
April 10, 2017
I really loved the writting style in this book. It felt so real to life. I did wish for more. Perhaps while I love speculative fiction and sci fi the best because there is more space to make commentary and go to new places.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews