A Reliable Wife by Robert Goolrick

So, my latest read is one that got such amazing reviews that it was hard to pass up and I have to say I managed to read it in just about 2 days.

Here's what the back cover says: "He placed a notice in a Chicago paper, an advertisement for a "reliable wife". She responded, saying that she was "a simple, honest woman." She was, of course, anything but honest and the only simple thing about her was her single-minded determination to marry this man and then kill him, slowly and carefully, leaving herself a wealthy widow. What Catherine Land did not realize was that the enigmatic and lonely Ralph Truitt had a plan of his own." This description is not so simple or rather I should say that it does give the gist of the plot but it isn't so vindictive a scheme. Catherine sounds deceitful in this description but in fact she is a character that you immediately feel a great likeness and sympathy for. Her life, as you find out, has been horrible and certainly a struggle but all of her actions seem, in a way, understandable.

For me, a better description of this novel is in the following quote from the last chapter of the book (pg. 280): "It was a story of people, of Ralph and Emilia and Antonio and Catherine and the mothers and the fathers who had died, too soon or late, of people who had hurt one another as much as people can do, who had been selfish and not wise, and had become trapped inside the bitter walls of memories they wished they had never had."

This book sounds depressing and I guess in many ways it was but in the end, I really enjoyed it because through all the hurt and pain and sorrow caused by and to all the characters, the central message seemed to be that even living through all the events forced on you in a lifetime, there can still be hope if you choose to have it. The paths you follow in life are your own and how you choose to live - whether in misery and sadness or with hope and effort - are the things that will pull you through and either allow you to experience love and happiness or hate and despair.

Robert Goolrick is a master at words. One reviewer said, "...the writing is so mesmerizing it makes one wonder whether Goolrick practices; anyone who can turn a sentence fragment into poetry so well has to work at it..." True dat! The writing is phenomenal and it's a book that you will pick up and have to finish just to see where these characters will choose to end up.