Customer Reviews

A Reliable Wife

5 star:		(181)
4 star:		(148)
3 star:		(90)
2 star:		(113)
1 star:		(244)

 

 

When wealthy businessman Ralph Truitt stood on the icy railroad platform waiting for the late train to deposit his mail order wife-to-be before him, he was expecting a woman of plain appearance with a missionary history; someone who could presumably make his house into a home and who could withstand the pressures of living in a still untamed country. That was what his ad had asked for: a reliable wife. Ralph Truitt was in for a surprise.

When she disembarked the train, Catherine Land's beautiful face didn't match the picture she had sent Truitt and he told her flatly, " ' Maybe you thought I was a fool. You were wrong.' " But a howling storm stopped Ralph from interrogating her there and then. And as the horses drew Truitt's carriage toward his estate in blinding snow, fate stepped in and won this woman a renewed offer to become Mrs. Truitt -- which was what she wanted.

Well, more precisely, she wanted what she intended would follow shortly: widowhood and the inheritance of Truitt's amassed estate. She had brought what she needed to implement her deadly scheme. Possessed of a scandalous past she would keep secret at all costs, Catherine had so much experience with men she was confident she could murder and yet remain emotionally unencumbered.

Ralph was no saint himself, but he carried an ingrained self-flagellating and resigned spirit. "Some things you escape, he thought. Most things you don't, certainly not the cold. You don't escape the things, mostly bad, that just happen to you." Wounds of love and lust had scarred him terribly two decades ago. Now alone and, for all intents and purposes, heirless at fifty-four, Ralph felt despair. He knew it wasn't unique to himself. He knew "the winters were too long," causing insanity, suicide, starvation, axe murders, and mostly silent desperation and depression. "These things happened."

Author Robert Goolrick's recurring theme of the potentially devastating psychological effects of long, bleak winters underscores the macabre situation in Truitt's mansion during that 1907 Wisconsin winter: The swirling snows outside mimic the Mediciesque intrigue inside the elaborate house. The plot is complex and labyrinthine, but it won't do to give away too much. Suffice to say, insanity -- but also love -- blows through on all sides.

A Reliable Wife seethes with savage passions which the author pens with an operatic flair. The prose is sometimes alarming: "He wanted to slice her open and lie inside the warm blood of her body." However, Goolrick also excels in memorable passages of a recuperative nature -- as a beautiful garden scene poignantly illustrates. Goolrick's suspenseful, sustained dialectic between the primal "heart of darkness" and the humane and cultured heart of charity stokes the plot, keeping the reader glued.

Although this novel is a certified page-turner, it can feel chaotic and contradictory due to a narrative consisting often of characters' uncensored, roiling feelings and streams of consciousness. It is unsettling and "messy" to follow them restlessly shifting from one thought to a contradictory one, baldly laying bare their brutish instincts, then subsiding almost soothingly, like restive waves.

A RELIABLE WIFE is a novel of intensity and raw power. On its own rather masochistic terms, it also offers up love (and forgiveness) of the deepest kind. This novel will appeal widely, but likely most to those who crave a bold but somewhat perverse love story featuring very flawed characters. They, despite their cravenness, reach out to readers and demand notice and even grudging respect and affection. Goolrick's fictional version of 1900's rural Wisconsin folk isn't pretty, but, "Such things happened." See what you think of this tale.

but I wish they wouldn't. A prosaic, uninspired, embarrassing attempt at literary fiction which falls flat. The writing is overwrought and repetitive, the sentences sound like they come from a second grader ("We've lived the lives we've made. I've lost. You've lost. This memory you have. It was sweet for such a short time. We've behaved badly. To each other. In the world. It's over. We're over. It's got to stop.") - Yikes! The author's favorite word is "languid," which pops up over and over (and over and over). Hey, get a thesaurus.

The plot is thin and boring, the most interesting element in the beginning with the runaway horses episode. Inconsistencies abound. And I just can't care about any of the unlikable one-dimensional characters, whose colors change on every page, sometimes within a paragraph, from absorption-love-desire-regret-bitterness-hate back to bitterness-regret-desire-love-absorption.

Easily, this is in my list of the worst books I have read. As a librarian, I will not be recommending this to my reading public. Don't waste your time - I did, so you don't have to.

After hearing the author interviewed on NPR, I was intrigued and immediately bought the book. I read it in two days, but after a few chapters, I was pulled along by nothing more than a desire to find out what would happen. I disliked the story and the writing at almost every stage. Nothing about the book is believable, least of all the characters' over-the-top "raging" passions. Don't waste your time unless you like "bodice ripper" soap operas.

I stayed up past my usual time last night, as I couldn't put down Robert Goolrick's latest, A Reliable Wife.

I was going to put down my thoughts first thing this morning, but was at a loss to put into words how amazing this book was.

It is set in 1907 rural Wisconsin, most of it during the harsh winter. Crime, mental illness and disease seem to be part of the accepted landscape. Goolrick in his end notes cites Michael Lesy's book Wisconsin Death Trip as having a 'profound influence on the structure and genesis of his novel.' The darkness and madness of the surrounding town is referred to often, adding to the overall tone of the novel.

Ralph Truit is the patriarch of the town that bears his name. He owns everything and nearly everyone works for him. He has money and power, but not the thing he craves the most, that which he has denied himself for twenty years. Female companionship - a wife. He advertises in a newspaper for ' a reliable wife.'

" He had wanted a simple, honest woman. A quiet life. A life in which everything could be saved and nobody went insane."

Catherine Land answers that ad, describing herself as 'a simple, honest woman'. Ralph sends for her and she arrives to become his spouse. However Catherine is not quite what she has represented herself to be.

"She knew a good deal more about what was to happen than he did." " She knew the end of the story."

I don't want to give away any more of the plot. But it is more complicated than it seems at first glance. Two wounded hearts, both longing for what they can't or don't have, bring these two people together, isolated in a small pocket of madness, for better or worse.

The story itself is captivating, but it is the language that mesmerized me. Goolrick's writing is raw and powerful. Ralph's discourse on his wants and desires are simply beautiful. Catherine's disquistion on her life, desires and how she came to be what she is, is brutal in it's honesty.

I don't know what else to say, other than I was caught up in the story from first to last page. Highly recommended!

My goodness. I can't believe the excellent reviews this book has received. I bought it, read it, and returned it for a full refund.
The characters are awkward, the plot is awkward, the writing is awkward, the sex scenes are awkward, even the names of the characters are awkward (Ralph Truitt, Catherine Land, Antonio Moretti as the bastard "son"). The musings of the unsympathetic, boring and unimaginative characters seem to go on forever, and the story is just ridiculous. I kept waiting for the plot twist that never happened.
If you actually care about not knowing what will happen in this predictable, implausible and downright silly book, don't read any further.....
For starters, the characters are unlikeable stereotypes. Even the dead ones, like the mother, the sister, the wife...As for the live ones? (The caretakers? Stereotypes.) Well, you know exactly what Catherine's past is when she's sitting on the train. If her clothes weren't a dead giveaway, her thoughts about the appearance of her train car tell you everything you need to know. Truitt's incessant moping about sex is just as predictable and boring. It's not even pathetically sad. It's just boring. So, the two main characters' respective tragic pasts are not exactly exciting, or even remotely interesting.
As for the plot: Again, when it isn't completely predictable, it's implausible. The writer virtually copies a scene right out of Jane Eyre, so that Catherine can ingratiate herself with Truitt shortly after they meet. The sister dies a Dickensian death. The attempt to make Truitt and Catherine's meeting less of an accident is so contrived as to be absurd. The near and actual deaths - equally predictable and contrived. Why wouldn't the wealthy Truitt hire private investigators to check her out before he sends for her, just as he hired PI's to find his long-lost "son"? Why would he send his new young wife to town to fetch Antonio? Why wouldn't Antonio just go take all Truitt's money and leave, instead of going through the trouble to set Catherine up to poison Truitt? How did they even know Truitt would select her as the mail-order bride to get the whole poisoning scheme in place? Why would Truitt know that she's poisoning him and just shrug it off - it's okay, just don't let me suffer, dear, while you're killing me? And the chase scene at the end, where Antonio ends up on the ice? Gee, I wonder what's going to happen to him? The list of absurdities goes on and on.
I was up all night reading this book, waiting for something interesting to happen, waiting to actually care about somebody - anybody - in the story. What an unfulfilling reading experience this was.
At least I got my money back.

I learned about this book while listening to NPR's Weekend Edition Sunday. I am a big fan of Wisconsin Death Trip and as the interview unfolded I was shocked to hear Goolrick relate the basic plot and themes of Cornell Woolrich's brilliant and beautifully written (and out of print) Waltz into Darkness. I have since read A Reliable Wife and am convinced that the plot and themes were either directly lifted from Waltz Into Darkness or indirectly from movies based on the book (Truffaut's Mississippi Mermaid and/or Original Sin) or both. In addition, there are subplots and scenes borrowed from Jane Eyre, Rebecca, and Anna Karenina. This is indeed the most derivative piece of writing that I have ever read. For a really great read about turn-of-the century sexual obsession, madness, and murder; get a hold of Woolrich's Waltz into Darkness and don't waste your time on A Reliable Wife.

If you regularly buy and read "The Inquirer," this book is for you - a whore, a gigilo, and a rich, anti-hero described in unending pages of pent-up passion. There is a terrific description of a run-away carriage and there is where you will find the best character in the book - a brave, strong, black gelding.

I rushed out to buy the book after hearing an NPR review and, after several chapters, skip read to the big revelation at the end, which I had pegged at about Chapter 8. I am a book lover. Every bookshelf is full, and the tops of half the closets. I do not discard books, but I tossed this one into the garbage after finishing it.

A Reliable Wife is set in Wisconsin in 1907. Ralph Truitt is a local, wealthy businessman who advertised in a Chicago newspaper for "a reliable wife." Catherine Land answered the advertisement, and sets in motion a plot to poison her husband.

The novel is marred by heavy-handed prose that aims to be literary, but isn't. A really depressing theme and plot does not make a novel great. And I got really, really bored by the obsessive way in which Goolrick describes things. An entire chapter on waiting for a train? Really? A hallmark of a great novel is one in which the theme is subtle, but powerful, and makes you think about it long after you've read the book; in this one, Goolrick hits his reader on the head--over and--over--with his theme.

Ralph Truitt's obsession with sex becomes tiresome by page 30, and the plot is filled with some major gaps. Why would Ralph hire someone to find his son, but not have them check into his wife's past, for example? And it's good to know that I wasn't the only one bothered by the plagiarized scenes from other books. The novel is billed as suspense, but it's hard to see such in a novel where one of the main character's motives are displayed right from the get-go--heck, even in the blurb on the back of the book!

Don't take my word for it though. There are plenty of people who loved this book. It just wasn't for me.

I dislike reading reviews mainly because they give too much away. Oh, how I wished I had delved further before getting this book. I did read one review that stated "starts out slow, but worth it." I did actually persevere and read the entire tome. Hideous! Writing style? Overly dramatic, repetitive emphasis in practically every paragraph to the point of madness. Thanks, got the point you were making the first time, sighed the second and by the fifth? Would gladly throttle the author and the publisher in short order. Ironically, for all the awkward redundancy (see how I change the words up a bit?) there is barely any description of the surroundings, the characters, their actions. You are left with flat, one dimensional beings on a static stage with minimal props. The true hook for this book? The porn. This book is nothing short of a "bodice ripper." Sadly, the author ruins even that.

Oh, my. This is truly one of the worst novels I have ever read. It was amusingly, hilariously bad. The narrative is inconsistent, especially in the final chapters, and the "novelist" kept losing control of his characters' narratives -- the thoughts, actions and feelings were completely contradictory with what previously happened in the story. The dialogue was simply wrong for the period, as if the "author" just couldn't be bothered to do his homework; his period details were also poorly realized and dated, and some were just wrong. Good grief. I would write more, but it would just be wrong to spend any more time dwelling on it.