Customer Reviews

The Good Husband (Ballantine Reader's Circle)

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

"The Good Husband" is the first work I have read by Gail Godwin and will not be the last. I found the book enlightening as well as pertinent. Godwin has a way of taking ordinary events and bringing a fresh, new perspective to them. For me, the novel seemed to be entertaining and at the same time, educational; designed to make a person think. I really appreciated being able to see death from Magda's perspective. I had never thought of death as a final examination. It was a revelation for me as I have had many people in my life die recently. Although some of them may not have viewed death from her perspective, it gave me a new outlook on the process. It also gave me a new perspective on life. I found the part about Francis' misericords very educational and captivating at the same time. I think that while I am in Europe, I will be visiting some cathedrals just to see for myself if they exist. Godwin must have put quite a bit of time and effort into researching the subject for it to be so detailed. I really appreciated being able to "educate" myself while at the same time "entertain" myself. While I enjoyed the entire novel, I think that the speech Hugo Henry gave on writing a novel was my favorite part. It was very clever of Godwin to weave Hugo's views, as an author, on writing a novel into her own novel. I realized how true it was when Hugo said, "If you get the beginning of your story right, it already contains the seed of its own ending. And if the ending's right, it succeeds in making the beginning inevitable"(410). I also loved how Hugo related a novel to a relationship. It seemed the perfect way for him to tell his wife, Alice, that he realized it was over for them. Godwin put the whole novel together so well that I felt like I could empathize with her characters. While I knew what would inevitably happen, I found myself just turning the pages. I cried and got angry with the characters and was sad when the novel ended. As someone once said, though I cannot remember whom, reading a book is like making new friends and when it is done, you leave. If you want to visit them again you have to reread the book. I am sure that I will be revisiting Magda, Francis, Hugo and Alice again. Meanwhile, I think I will check out some of Gail Godwin's other books and make some more new friends.

As far as I'm concerned, you can't possibly care about a book unless you care about the characters. The fabricated inhabitant of a novel's pages are the catalyst for the entire tale. Gail Godwin's The Good Husband is no exception, and is, in fact, a wonderful example of this premise. Godwin manages to create fully textured and sympathy evoking characters in a plot that, while wrought with tragedy, remains genuine.

The story circles around the slow death of Magda Danvers, a brilliant college professor suffering from cancer. Magda is a lively, feisty spirit who, even in her deterioration, is difficult not to like. Her sarcastic yet somehow warm ways draw us in as we watch her prepare for what she refers to as her "Final Examination." We find ourselves wishing that we could have known Magda before her illness. It would be very easy to let the demise of such a person become overly dramatic, sappy, soppy. However, like Magda herself, Godwin handles the death of Magda Danvers's with all the grace and dignity that can be mustered.

In fact, I find myself hurting more for poor, gentle Francis than the tough and tenacious Magda, who must care for his wife during the process of her death, an ordeal that is remarkably painful for them both. Looking in retrospect at the novel, I find that I would normally have been irritated by Francis's tireless, unending, persistence to the point of obsessed devotion, coupled with his repeated disintegration into tears in nearly every chapter. Instead, curiously enough, it only endears him to me. I feel sympathy for Francis to the point of being angry at the dying Magda for being so cross with the struggling man (I mean, sure she's dying, but does she have to yell at the poor man?). Francis's enduring goodness under any circumstances cannot help but win over my affections, because in his submission to Magda, he actually displays tremendous strength that comes from the deepest love. Somehow, Godwin was able to make this point without making the reader gag.

Similarly, she manages to write the character of Alice Henry with surprising realism despite Alice's ludicrously tragic history. At seventeen, she lost her mother, father and brother (who she adored to the point of incest), and had to move in with her aunt, who later related that her beloved brother was not actually her brother, but adopted, and soon after died herself. As if that wasn't enough, the story opens soon after Alice and her husband lose her baby, and have to cope with their deteriorating marriage as Alice struggles with feelings towards the humble and meek Francis. If that's not trashy soap opera, I don't know what is. Yet, Alice manages to keep such a seemingly calm, even tone about her that you seem forced to take her seriously. She doesn't mope or whine over her deplorable situation, and one has to respect that. She truly possesses the attitude of one who's gone through so much, that they've learned long ago messy scenes bring no solace. Throughout the novel, I found myself hoping desperately that Alice would finally be able to somehow gain that solace.

Living with Hugo, certainly, would not bring this to her. Hugo Henry, a writer-in-residence at Aurelia College (where Magda taught), although probably my least favorite character, seems to me to be most realistic. His flaws are so intricately worked into his character--his homophobia, misogyny, and deep insecurity--that you almost don't notice them until they are pointed out, a very impressive feat of writing. You have to pity Hugo, especially when you look at his desire to make everyone around him happy. The tragedy is we know Hugo can't make anyone happy, because he himself will never be happy.

Overall, Gail Godwin has conjured up an amazing cast of characters and masterfully woven them together. She is able to instantly create a bond between the reader and her little cast that completely sucks the reader into The Good Husband. By the end of the first chapter, you feel as though you know these people, and have known them for the longest time. And by the conclusion, you feel as though you've experienced everything with them and only want for their happiness. This, to me, is what makes a novel worthwhile; this is what reading is all about.

"What next?" This common theme in Gail Godwin's The Good Husband seems to be fitting when you finish reading this articulate story of life, love, death, and everything that is encompassed within these complex experiences. The story focuses upon the lives of two professor/novelists (or should it be novelist/professors) and their spouses. The intricacy of every interaction, of how life and death can change one's mindset and of how love can be wrong, fade, or at least become skewed throughout a person's lifetime, with the interactions and cross-interactions of Magda Danvers, her husband Francis Lake, Hugo and Alice Henry make this novel go.

Magda Danvers and Francis Lake make an interesting pair; she is a pure academic whose mind never stops wondering or questioning, while he is a caretaker who emphasizes the physical, often overlooking the intellectual. During her dying months, Francis tends to all of Magda's needs, except the one that she really wants him to - her mind. Magda has no qualms about taking her frustration out on him about this, even though he always keeps the composure of a man of God, which he was once studying to be. At the beginning, you get the sense that the good husband is just a description of Francis; however, Magda makes a reference to her good husband as death. But, of course, this allusion is over Francis' head, just like all of her others.

At the same point that Magda Danvers is on her last leg, Hugo and Alice Henry lose their child during birth. The significance here lies in the fact that with this loss of child, so goes the loss of their relationship. However the question must be asked if they would have had a healthy birth of their child, could that have saved their marriage? Alice begins visiting with Francis regularly during Magda's illness, grows a strange attraction toward him. He is very different from Henry, but is that the reason for her attraction, or is he simply a better fit for her personality? Love can be a confusing thing, and this strange love square, it offers no solution to this quandary.

When I began reading this book, I became bored and uninterested. The overuse of unneeded repetition throughout the beginning chapters, the all-to-simple metaphor of their front yard's demise corresponding with Magda's, the sometimes jumpy narrative style, and the storyline that seems to be going nowhere left me pained during reading. However, Gail Godwin comes back strong from these annoyances with a story that is more about the reader's self reflection than anything that she could possibly put down on paper. This idea of one's death as a final examination left me pondering my own life for hours after I had laid the book down. The way that she shows love in all its intricacy (and delicacy) through the point of view of omnipotent narrator allows the reader to see perspectives that might have never been able to come from one single person.

After reading this book, I have some new ideas concerning love and its role in my life. I am trying to sort through the parts of my life that are what matters and what's ... garbage. I also have contemplated how I want my final exam to look ... even with the possibility that we might all get the same grade.

In the inspired words of Gail Godwin: "There were only a few stories worth telling, which was why they needed to be told over and over again, until everyone recognized them as his own experience." The Good Husband started as one of those "few" stories that we hear over and over again; you know the type, the sort that starts out with the protagonist lying tragically wan and frail in a sack of yellow skin, while his/her mind continues to dispel buckets of insights into the lives of his/her friends and family. The plot seemed so clichéd that at first I was confusing the storyline with another book I was reading at the time, Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant by Anne Tyler, which also stars a dying woman relegating knowledge to her family. However, what rockets Godwin's work to the top of the pile is her ability to not only describe characters but people.

All of Godwin's characters are individuals you feel you've met somewhere. Magda Danvers is the brilliant and awe-inspiring professor of English who layers her words with more meanings than a Tom Stoppard play. There's Hugo Henry: a disillusioned writer with a Napoleon complex who would rather work on a new novel than on his marriage. Magda's husband is Francis Lake, a devoted husband whose devotion seems to be teetering on obsession. Alice Henry is Hugo's disenchanted wife who has had to deal with the loss of her brother and best friend, her parents, and now her newborn son - and all within her meager thirty-five years of life. Then there's Gresham P. Harris - the ingratiating president of Aurelia College who is obsessed with his "PBDs" (potential big donors) - and his wife Leora - who Magda refers to as the Pastel Patter; Leora dresses like an Easter egg and always just "happens" to sit next to Francis at every school function, there to offer him a friendly squeeze on the arm and pat on the back. These characters are the idiosyncratic and flawed individuals we have all come to recognize as ourselves.

And not only does Godwin saturate The Good Husband with believable and easily relatable characters, but she depicts them accurately in the trials and tribulations of human experience. Alice and Hugo have a failing marriage; Hugo has to come to terms with his son's homosexuality - and with the fact that twenty-nine year old Cal's relationship with a fifty-seven year old man is better and more loving than his own marriage; Francis has to accept the inevitability of his beloved wife's death; Alice needs to learn how to experience life after the death of her family. These are feelings of loss and acceptance and uncertainty that we have all felt in one way or another. Godwin beautifully portrays the common bond and interconnectedness between human beings as a whole, and shows both the tragedy and beauty in their relationships.

Yes, these may be concepts that we have dealt with before; relationships, death, loss, blah, blah, blah, but Godwin writes about them with startling accuracy. Just like Magda, she seems to be able to see into people; we are all just bundles of insecurities waiting to unravel. With precise word choice and poignant scenes dotted with humor and the natural tragic comedy that is life, Godwin takes one of the few stories worth telling and tells it better than it has ever been told before.

I can't quite put my finger on why I was so disappointed in this book. The characters were well-drawn, and fairly sympathetic, each in their own way. The plot moved along relatively briskly. I just don't know. Maybe it was Godwin's habit of "foreshadowing" an event in the past. Several times we hear about a life-changing event in a characters life before we are taken back to find out what happened. Just tell us already and stop playing games! Perhaps it was that certain parts of it seemed contrived, not plot-wise, just writing-wise, as though Godwin said to herself "Ah, there's a clever thought, I must find a way to write it into my next book." And then she did, in the guise of writing about writers and thinkers. It became very annoying to have these things we were obviously supposed to regard as "gems" littering an otherwise good scene.

I have loved every book I have read by Gail Godwin. She has such great insight into people and is perceptive, all while writing with a compassionate heart. She has an amazing ability to create characters that you can care about, dream along with, and feel for. The 4 main characters truly grow and are made stronger by their sufferings. I loved Francis and his simple joys in life. I loved his true devotion to Magda. He is truly a good husband. Come along on the journey with these characters. This book made me love and appreciate my life more...my family, my marriage and my own good husband.

Gail Godwin's The Good Husband is, at its core, about deconstructing its fascinating characters. Although by the end of the novel, there is little resolution - Godwin even states in her commentary that readers are disappointed by the lack of a convenient happy ending drawing all the threads the story follows together - you will really know the four stars of the novel, and have vested interest in what happens in their often angst-ridden lives. Because the reader cares for Magda, Francis, Alice, and Hugo, the plot avoids being trite and depressing, and instead becomes a sad, though hopeful, tale of overcoming loss through love, one that you won't be able to put down.

The central character of the novel is Magda Danvers, a brilliant author and profressor, who is slowly dying from ovarian cancer. She remains quick-witted and bright, however, and thank goodness - where Godwin might have strayed into the stuffiness and overwhelming weight of death, she instead keeps Magda's mind active. Magda, instead of pitying herself, is preparing for her "Final Exam" and looks back on her life not with sadness, but with her own critical eye, analyzing her aspirations, her fame, and her relationship with her husband Francis. Immersed in Magda's vibrant memories, we see her meet Francis in a seminary; see Francis leave the priesthood to instead devote his life to her. Francis is tireless, a constant presence around Magda's bedside, a house husband that is content to worship his wife. This commitment, of course, raises a dilemma - what will Francis do when Magda dies?

Magda's deterioration is mirrored by the deterioration of the marriage of Alice and Hugo Henry, our two final protagonists. Having just lost their first baby in a home birth, their marriage quickly suffers, heading towards an inevitable end. Alice begins to visit Magda and brings Francis food and companionship, in the hopes that he will think of himself, instead of wasting away as he cares for his wife. Alice also helps Francis endure the parade of visitors that come to pay their respects to Magda, vibrant characters that Godwin masterfully creates that the reader can instantly recognize as people in their own life that they love to love or hate. Alice helps Francis cope, admiring his strength and devotion, while being drawn to him herself. Hugo, struggling to write his next novel, must deal with the decline of his relationship with Alice, as well as the coming out of his son from a previous marriage - a touching side plot that allows Hugo to start understanding the nature of happiness.

The Good Husband succeeds on a variety of levels. The moving relationship between Magda and Francis, for instance, is a double-edged sword: yes, they love each other deeply, but Francis has been hidden so thoroughly by Magda's shadow that he has no real life or aspirations of his own. Without Magda, how will he be able to be happy? Alice and Hugo's struggle, meanwhile, is just as poignant - the loss of a child instead of the spouse. How each character deals with his or her lot is an intriguing and beautiful study in human emotions and reactions, in the ups and downs of life that we all face and can identify with.

When I read the description of The Good Husband, I thought to myself, "haven't I read that plot before?" Loss, family tragedy, Alice trying to discover the secret of "the good marriage?" Instead, Alice's examination of the "good marriage" of Magda and Francis becomes a wonderful journey - both for her and the reader. Godwin balances the good with the bad - Francis' love for Magda with his loss of individuality, for example - and this balance creates a stirring and accurate portrayal of human life. The Good Husband is a must read.

This is an interesting, well crafted novel of character, and of the marital relationship. You are privy to each of the main character's thoughts, although Francis is not introspective at all, and most of what you learn about him is through dialogue. He is the most problematic character, being such a good soul; it took me most of the book to accept him as genuine, not an idealized personality. Perhaps Godwin could have offered more insight into his attraction to Magda, or perhaps BOTH marriages occurred in part because one partner was ready for marriage to escape their current life.

Bea McCandless is an appealing secondary character, and I liked what she had to say about novels (p. 270): the characters are like people she knew, "Only they're clearer, somehow, in your books. One comprehends them better."

The Good Husband is an engaging story of life, death, and love. It centers on Magda Danvers, an effervescent, quick-witted English professor, and her preparation for her ultimate "Final Exam," as she endures the end stages of ovarian cancer.

Less than intrigued by the title and jacket summary, the library-loaned, hardback version of The Good Husband sat collecting dust on my bureau for three weeks, and had to be renewed at least twice before I even opened it. By the time I had to return it, though, I was fined three dollars for "sand damage"; when I finally cracked it open, it instantly became my beach read, and I could hardly put it down.

Despite her declining physical condition, Magda remains fiery until the very end, supported by her devoted and self-effacing husband, Francis Lake. As she reflects on the independence of her youth, her scholastic endeavors, and how she came to unintentionally lure her spouse away from his seminary, Magda facilitates change and self-discovery in all of her companions. These include not only her husband, but also colleague and disconsolate writer-in-residence Hugo Henry, and his despondent wife, Alice. The intertwining of these four individuals makes for an impassioned story of the different connotations of love and the sanctity of relationships.

Godwin skillfully enhances the captivating storyline using a plethora of different literary techniques to engage the reader. Allusions to Dante, Tiresias, and other allegorical characters and authors are plentiful. Several different characters, both major and minor, narrate, offering different perspectives. Hugo Henry's criticisms of his own writing style are used in Godwin's own presentation, creating a comedic contradiction. Francis' interest in misericords (carvings on choir stalls in Gothic churches) and their associated themes parallel story lines within the novel. The use of non-narrative segments, such as "interdepartmental memos," letters, and so on, bridge gaps succinctly and keep the story moving.

Situated within the professional community of the fictional Aurelia College, students and professors will especially appreciate the ability to relate to academic politics and figures such as President Gresham Harris, who is eager to please alumni and gain PBDs ("potential big donors"), and Ray Johnson, a smug English Department chair.

"Mates are not always matches, and matches are not always mates," affirms Magda Danvers. With this in mind, Godwin explores the qualities, and even scenarios, that attract us to our lovers, crushes, spouses, whatever, and the circumstances under which we fall in and out of love.

The jacket description says that the main characters will "learn that the most ideal relationship - even a perfect marriage - doesn't come without a price..." I'm still not sure what this is supposed to infer, for it seems an inaccurate interpretation of Godwin's message. This just goes to show that the old cliché holds weight: you shouldn't judge a book by its cover.

This book has four main characters: Magda, a brilliant professor and writer who is dying; her husband Hugo who has found fulfillment in caring for her lifelong; Alice, who has recently suffered a miscarriage (and has a history of personal loss); and Alice's husband Hugo, an egocentric and currently blocked novelist.

As Magda's health declines (without making her any less interesting) Alice finds herself drawn to Francis, as her marriage has suffered since the death of her child. As expected with a Godwin book, we also meet a host of fascinating secondary characters - from the "Pastel Patter" an overly nosy college dean's wife, to the wife's adopted child, an obstinate young teen who is dealing with the loss of both her puppy and her name (changed from Crystal to Elberta).

Godwin paints each character brilliantly as a fully dimensional human being with both flaws and strengths. She admits in a preface that each of them is part of her, although she took certain traits from friends. However, she came to construct her protagonists, she did a superb job.