Customer Reviews

The Wife's Tale: A Novel

5 star:		(27)
4 star:		(22)
3 star:		(11)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(10)

 

 

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.

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.)

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!

The Wife's Tale is the story of morbidly obese Mary Gooch. She's living an ordinary life in an ordinary town, with a pleasant and loving husband. Then one day he leaves. Mary goes on a literal and emotional journey to find her husband.

Lori Lansens did an amazing job painting the picture of Mary's life. You definitely feel her pain, as she struggles with the small and large inconveniences, embarrassments, disabilities and heartaches of a lifetime of obesity. Mary is very, very real. Too real - I wanted out of her world, so I put the book down a number of times.

And the plot is plodding. Once Mary's husband leaves, and she is motivated to find him, things start happening. But it never really gets going anywhere interesting. There aren't any big twists or revelations. Even the ending is just sort of... unfinished.

I appreciated the strength of the author's writing enough that I'll want to try another of her books. But I won't be recommending The Wife's Tale to my friends.

It's a wonderful feeling to say that I knew from the second page of this book that it would be good. Not having read Lansen's earlier novel, The Girls, I now feel envious of those who have, since talent like hers as shown in The Wife's Tale makes me believe all her writing must be wonderful.

The Wife's Tale is a novel about Mary Gooch and her life. Her constant battle with food and her body, her ever-present hunger, her ghosts from the past reminding her of better times. Times when she was happy, and carefree, and skinny. It's about her secrets and her husband. Her husband of twenty-five years who she married when she was young and svelte and pregnant, before she gained the weight and lost the baby. Her husband who disappears the night before their anniversary, saying and doing nothing, just leaving. Leaving her with her secrets and hunger until the day she wakes and realizes she doesn't need food. She wakes from her life and chooses to take a step in a new direction, to embark on a journey. To become someone other than the woman who only wears dark navy scrubs, the woman from Leaford who is incredibly obese. To be the woman who solves her own problems. In the journey she takes to find her husband, she finds herself: the Mary without the food.

This story was heartbreaking and sad, but also incredibly beautiful and lyrical and literary and uplifting. Lansen weaves Mary's memories into the story which help us to understand her pain, weight issues are something to which most of us can relate. Brutally honest and blunt, occasionally fresh and funny, but always true and real from the perspective of an overweight women who feels helpless, this was a touching message of hope and the power of change and strength in us all.

I loved Mary Gooch. I loved her for being honest with me about who she was and the secrets she has. The chocolates, the binges, the tabloids, the obsession. And I loved her for making a choice, for leaving Leaford, for going after her husband, and then changing direction on the way. For following her father's old advice to "take a drink from the hose and push on."

The praiseworthy aspects of this book are many. As in The Girls, the setting of rural Canada is flawlessly constructed, the dialog is realistic and spare, the emotions are so skillfully revealed that they play through you as subtly as your own heartbeat. But the characters are almost too real in this book, without quite enough spice to make them as interesting as they should be. That could be considered praiseworthy, too, that the writer trusts in the heroic possibilities of 'regular folks.' The trouble is, it wasn't that interesting.

So who are these regular folks? Mary and her husband Gooch. She is a drugstore clerk and he is a delivery truck driver. They do each have one outstanding characteristic. He is extraordinarily tall and she is extraordinarily overweight, but aside from that, they have a polite little marriage in a small town with garden variety pastimes and complaints. When Gooch takes off, Mary is forced to leave the home in which she's hidden her gradually increasing bulk for decades. When she begins to change, everything begins to change. The journey is at times compelling, and at times a little stomach-rolling. But for me, it is never epic.

As Mary ponders her transformation, the reader is asked to ponder it with her. The constant descriptions of her sweat, smells, gas, aches, chafings, sunburns, is one part of it. The other is the addict's orientation of this character to food, her description of her "triggers," the chocolate and grease she craves and stuffs herself with. Reading about food being used in its most addictive and unhealthy ways is grotesque. My heart goes out to people who struggle with this particular addiction, but it is like reading books in which people drink themselves to death. For me, it is very, very difficult to read. For other readers, this might be an entirely different experience.

Even with her food addiction, Mary is a fairly ordinary woman who transforms into, well, to be honest, a slightly more normal ordinary woman. The transformation from 'sick and barely functional' into 'getting better and a lot more functional' is carefully presented, but is it really that interesting? Maybe the trouble is that Mary isn't that interesting. She doesn't read much, has no hobbies, her friendships are polite and surface, she doesn't have an interesting history or much of an interesting take on life. The only thing that really interests her is food and how it affects her body. An entire novel about a person's relationship with her body is a little much for me to take. I much preferred The Girls, in which the author went to such pains to remind us that even in their extraordinary bodies, they were young women with dreams and yearnings. Somehow, positioning the ordinary within the extraordinary worked in that book.

The novel is, in final analysis, not about Mary coming to terms with her husband's desertion of their life together. It is about her learning to come to terms with food, to see it as a source of nourishment and pleasure rather than consolation and self-destruction. This might read as an epic journey for other readers, and if so, I respect our difference of opinion. But for me, this is not a compelling journey.

I have read and enjoyed Lori Lansens' other work so I was excited to read this book. Unfortunately, the beginning of this book dragged on and on. It seemed as if several chapters were dedicated to Mary's waiting around for Gooch when only a few pages were needed.

I kept reading though, and about a third of the way in the story grabbed me. I thought Lansens did a great job describing Mary's emotions, and how her life and ended up the way it did. Very rarely do you find a character who understands that she's pushing people away, but are unable to stop doing it because they loathe themselves so much.

Anyway, I loved the middle sections of the book but HATED the ending, or should I say lack thereof. Seriously, sitting down to eat a sandwich is NOT an ending. I kept flipping the pages to make sure I wasn't missing something. Unless she was setting up a sequel I can not fathom why anyone would end a book in this way.

The premise of the book was appealing, as was the cover. The contents, however, have made me feel weighted down and heavy, no pun intended on this book about an obese woman. After spending a few hours reading the book, I have turned to the reviews to decide whether there is more that is yet to be uncovered that will make the rest of the book more compelling and interesting than what I've read thus far.

I wanted to like this book, as I found it refreshing that we have a - well - fat woman as the main character. As someone who has struggled with her weight on a lesser level than Mary, I expected to relate more to the character. Anyone who has tried to lose weight or is struggling with overeating will recognize the siren song of the food that Mary hears. Unfortunately, it's as depressing to read about as it is to experience.

The reviews have made me decide to make a rare abandonment of a book. The author is no doubt gifted and I enjoy the style of writing that captures real and/or oridinary life - such as Elizabeth Berg, for example - but while part of me wants to find out what happens, I really don't particularly want to have to read the whole book and feel Mary's depression to do so. With regret, I'm abandoning the book.

I finally got into the book when Mary got to California. I really felt like she was a great character and I was rooting for her the whole time. The problem with being invested in her character is being let down when there was no conclusion for her at the end of the book. IMO the author just stopped writing. I never got any satisfaction with the story lines that she created.

Some may consider this a spoiler, so read with caution.

((Background: I am huge LOST fan and was so disappointed when it ended after all those years..and still had not answered my questions. In all honesty, I stopped watching it during the second season because there were soooo many questions being created every week, no answers. But I went back and watched it all on Netflix and expected the closure the writers promised. I have learned a lot from that experience and will move on to my review:))


This book (while nothing like Lost in storline) really made me mad. I don't LOVE books that open with a huge, stressful issue that the reader is constantly worrying about, while the book seems like it would/should progress on the issue itself.

Meaning, Mrs Gooch's husband is gone when the book opens. There are lots of questions raised, about found money, who is drawing from her bank, fidelity, the love he did or didn't really have for her, will she get her stolen items back. Most of these were never answered.

Yet, I gave it a half decent rating because the writing was soooo good. But the ending...no kidding...was a shock. Not because the reader was left saying "Huh? What happened there? So exciting and unexpected!!" NO. I actually turned the page and could not BELIEVE it had ended...there had to be more...more pages, more story..some answers. Did Mary have a life-threatening injury from the knot between her eyes? Believe it or not, that was my second-biggest question, I won't even tell you what the writer left out completely. Oh, lots of things.

Now, the journey to the end is great and yet stressful. Great because this author can really write. She weaves her story, lots of information and detail that never seems like filler. This fact adds to the issue of the ending because with so much in-depth detail of her weight and inlaws and past you expect a well formed ending (with or without answers btw). It didn't even end neatly, it really feels like the last chapter was forgotten at print time and left out. It just trails offfffff...quickly...story..story..drift...oh what?? Where is the ending? What the??!!

I also picked up The Girls by the same writer and am afraid to read it because of the unanswered questions in this book. I suppose the author may feel that readers can "decide for themselves" but imo then why write a book at all? To tell part of a story, make us CARE about these questions, to draw us into wanting to read for answers...then not give them to us? It feels like a bully with a magnifying glass over a readers anthill.