JC: I’m a bit late to the party on this review. Robert Goolrick is already getting some very good press on his new novel A Reliable Wife, and deservedly so. He performs a couple of pretty fantastic tricks in it. The first is in the very impressive opening chapter. He creates such a vivid picture in his first paragraphs that it’s like he has frozen a moment in time, snowflakes in midair, gawking onlookers, and all of Ralph Truitt’s tragic past is obvious. I thought it was quite a stunning scene.
Of course his past is not so transparant, and neither is that of his spouse-to-be, selected in a pre-WWI Wisconsin version of the mail-order bride. The two become acquainted in the close quarters of the north country winter. She is slowly killing him, but he doesn’t mind, as long as she accomplishes one final task for him.
Pretty gripping stuff.
That other trick? Well, it’s hard to explain. How many times have you been reading a very good book, and the author reveals a shocking turn in the plot that you know, you just know(!) has blown the rest of the novel, because he showed his hand too early? And you say Crap! because there is no way the author can undo it, and there is way too much book left. The whole thing’s going to unravel.
I swear that’s what I thought about halfway through A Reliable Wife — damn, he’s ruined it. But I was wrong. Goolrick takes the point of no return and makes a nice little Sophoclean shift, ratchets up the tension, and makes a hell of a novel out of it. It reminded me of Flannery O’Connor in some ways, dark and surprising. Worth your time.
jc
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