The Wife's Tale: A Novel [Hardcover]

Lori Lansens (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 10, 2010

On the eve of their Silver Anniversary, Mary Gooch is waiting for her husband Jimmy--still every inch the handsome star athlete he was in high school--to come home. As night turns to day, it becomes frighteningly clear to Mary that he is gone. Through the years, disappointment and worry have brought Mary's life to a standstill, and she has let her universe shrink to the well-worn path from the bedroom to the refrigerator. But her husband's disappearance startles her out of her inertia, and she begins a desperate search.

For the first time in her life, she boards a plane and flies across the country to find her lost husband. So used to hiding from the world, Mary finds that in the bright sun and broad vistas of California, she is forced to look up from the pavement. And what she finds fills her with inner strength she's never felt before. Through it all, Mary not only finds kindred spirits, but reunites with a more intimate stranger no longer sequestered by fear and habit: herself.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Lansens's hopeful and gentle third novel (after The Girls), opens in the same fictitious Ontario county as its predecessors, but the heroine's journey takes her to a vastly different landscape, both literally and spiritually. In Leaford, Mary Gooch's life is strictly circumscribed—she's even worn a rut in the carpet between the bed and the kitchen, so often has the 302-pound woman made the trip. So when Mary's handsome husband disappears on the eve of their silver wedding anniversary, Mary wonders whether her size or her aversion to adventure chased him off. With few clues, Mary leaves her small town for one of the first times in her life, venturing first to Toronto and then to the suburbs of Los Angeles, where a series of encounters with strangers shakes her out of her lethargy. Mary's journey may be too carefully mapped out, but she's a wonderful character, and Lansens's handling of her eventual transformation into someone capable of compassion and acceptance is handled with a light but assured touch. (Feb.)
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From Booklist

Lansens’ third character-driven novel tracks the highs and lows in the life of Mary Gooch, who still has “such a pretty face” and a “voluminous body.” On the evening of Mary’s twenty-fifth wedding anniversary, her husband, Jimmy, doesn’t come home, initiating a domino-like series of actions that turn Mary’s life around. Initially embarrassed by Jimmy’s disappearance, and deciding that “everyone knew about Jimmy Gooch leaving his fat wife to go on some middle-aged vision quest,” she boards a plane for California, where his mother lives and where Mary is sure he will eventually turn up. There she is befriended by an odd mélange of characters who seem destined to help, including an Israeli taxi driver who takes her to his friend’s plus-size boutique for a make-over, a single mom whose children adopt Mary as their favorite babysitter, and Jesus Garcia, her mother-in-law’s pool cleaner who shares with Mary his own survival strategies. Lansens writes with acute insight into Mary’s bingeing and depression, fully immersing readers in her protagonist’s struggle to find a new and better self. --Deborah Donovan

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 368 pages
• Publisher: Little, Brown and Company; 1 edition (February 10, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0316069310
• ISBN-13: 978-0316069311
• Product Dimensions: 6.2 x 1.2 x 9.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (75 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #267,295 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Lori Lansens was born and raised in Chatham, Ontario, a small Canadian town with a remarkable history and a collection of eccentric characters. Living with her family in southern California now, she could not resist the pull of her fictitious 'Baldoon County' when she set out to write The Wife's Tale. She took the journey, along with her main character, from Canada to the Pacific Coast of America, where she enjoys the sunshine, and has learned a thing or two about transformation. She has written several screenplays and is the author of two previous novels, The Girls and Rush Home Road.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

30 of 33 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Lori Lansens loves her misfits, December 7, 2009

By 

Susan Tunis (San Francisco, CA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Wife's Tale: A Novel (Hardcover)

(What's this?)

I liked Lori Lansens' last novel enough that I wanted to read this one right away. I liked this one too, though not quite as much. With its endearing conjoined heroines, The Girls was such an original story. The Wife's Tale, on the other hand, is very familiar--almost an archetypal ugly duckling tale. Yes, it's a story we've all read before, an oldie but a goodie. And here it is in a nutshell:

On the eve of their 25th wedding anniversary, Jimmy Gooch leaves his morbidly obese, middle-aged wife, Mary. She goes in search of him, and winds up finding herself. There's more to it than that, of course, but you can make those discoveries on your own.

What I will say is this--coming into this novel, knowing the above premise, my first thought was, "the husband's a monster!" But Lansens writing is more subtle than that. The husband is not a monster, and Mary Gooch has a lot of issues. While the story is familiar, Lansens is not regurgitating the same old black and white story. There's a little more nuance going on here, and some readers may not appreciate that not all the loose ends get tied up by the end. I, however, don't believe every novel has to end tied neatly with a red bow. This wife's journey is a tale worth reading.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Nicely written, but a fairy tale..., April 10, 2010

By 

M. Nichols (San Francisco, CA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Wife's Tale: A Novel (Hardcover)

Although Lori Lansens has an immensely readable style that easily keeps pages turning, "The Wife's Tale" is a familiar story. Anyone who has seen "Shirley Valentine" or read "She's Come Undone" will know where this is going from page one. An obese protagonist is on a journey to self-acceptance.

There were several things about this novel that didn't endear me to it. For one, the portrayal of obesity was cartoonish at times. I didn't find Mary's transformation very realistic. Most people who struggle with their weight (I am maintaining a 70 lb weight loss myself) battle with it on a near daily basis. Abusing food is an ongoing issue, not something you magically part with because you find that you like your own company. Also I found the treatment of Los Angeles in this novel to be a fairy tale. Mary happens upon a suburb where everyone offers her makeovers and rides. It's as if she's come upon Mayberry a few miles east of Malibu.

There were also some melodramatic twists towards the end that felt unnecessary. Ultimately, what I liked least was Mary herself. I found her kind of blah. We're supposed to cheer her on but honestly I just found myself wondering, "Would a guy really like her? And why?" And, yes, I realize that means I didn't really get the point of the book at all. Which exactly is my point. This novel doesn't earn its feminist conclusions.

All in all, this is a light read that is easy to get through but short on substance. I probably won't read this author again because I find her to be a bit overrated. (Yes, I read "The Girls" too.)

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Review by www.cymlowell.blogspot.com, February 23, 2010

By 

Cym H. Lowell "www.cymlowell.blogspot.com" (Dallas, TX USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Wife's Tale: A Novel (Hardcover)

Imagine that you were left all alone one night. No spouse, no money, down on yourself, no children, no relatives active in your life, no future, and really no past except for the absent spouse. What would you do? Would you go down in flames? Or would you soar like a phoenix, reborn from the ashes of prior life?

This is the story of Mary Gooch, an obese rural Canadian woman who declared that she would commit suicide if she weighed more than 300 pounds. With that figure in the rearview mirror, she continued to gain. The day before her 25th wedding anniversary, her husband disappeared. He left a note saying he had won the lottery and left her some money in the bank.
Mary then embarked on the journey of her life.

The Wife's Tale is a beautiful story, compelling told to the point that Mary becomes our hero. I was excited to follow her evolution, cheering for her at every step in the path. I celebrated her achievements and self-realizations. When she encountered adversity, or defeat, I hoped she would brush herself off and move forward, which she inevitably did. This is a story of self-determination at its finest. We should all seek to find ourselves. Mary does in her own way.

I can only hope that I would be as strong as Mary.

In the end, this is a story of self-fulfillment. Each of us is the master of our own destiny, reaping the harvest of what we sow. Mary sowed affection, generosity, and faith in the strangers that she met. She was rewarded with a new life. Perhaps, she was far better off in her new life than had the prior life continued.

The Wife's Tale is also a spiritual guide. Though not a religious book as such, the life of Mary is a testament to the healing power of redemption. A new life born from the bold.

I loved this book and so will you!