A Reliable Wife

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.

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!

I really couldn't put this book down. I had read Mr. Goolrick's memoir, and knew he was a good writer, but even so, I was pleasantly surprised by his first novel. I read a lot, but it is only rarely that I connect with a novel to the point that reading it is almost like watching a film. I could see the early 20th century fabrics, visualize the characters so well, hear the chug of a train in the mid-west prairie, see the sensual bedchamber of Antonio, the crack of ice breaking, the look of a sky ready to dump a blizzard of snow, a secret garden transformed, that blue bottle of arsenic, the spare midwest farmhouse, the younger Antonio brutilized by his father. What impressed me the most, was that this book was well written, insightful, AND a rollicking fun good read, with plot twists that I didn't guess before reading.

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.

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.