The Wife's Tale: A Novel

by Lori Lansens Narrated by Justine Eyre

Overview

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 the Publisher

"A sensitive but deliciously comic account of Mary's fight against the "obeast" that has lived inside her since childhood, The Wife's Tale offers more than self-improvement: there are loving reflections on marriage and family in small-town Ontario, hilarious travelogues about American obsessions like McMansions and vanity license plates, and a tender documentary of the improbable compassion of strangers for fellow travelers. Of course, there's plenty of self-discovery too.... Lansens has more than a few tales worth telling."—Casey Cep, New York Times Sunday Book Review

"Lansens—who lived so memorably inside the heads of conjoined twins Ruby and Rose in The Girls—sketches another indelible female character here. Mary Gooch... [is] original... heartbreakingly funny and sad."—Entertainment Weekly

"Lansens' clear prose unveils the connection between a body weighed down by flesh and a spirit smothered by loneliness. Mary's odyssey of heartache and hope is not so much about finding her husband as it is about rediscovering herself."—People

"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... Mary Gooch's [is] 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."—Publishers Weekly

People

"Lansens' clear prose unveils the connection between a body weighed down by flesh and a spirit smothered by loneliness. Mary's odyssey of heartache and hope is not so much about finding her husband as it is about rediscovering herself."

Entertainment Weekly

"Lansens--who lived so memorably inside the heads of conjoined twins Ruby and Rose in The Girls--sketches another indelible female character here. Mary Gooch... [is] original... heartbreakingly funny and sad."

Casey Cep - New York Times Sunday Book Review

"A sensitive but deliciously comic account of Mary's fight against the "obeast" that has lived inside her since childhood, The Wife's Tale offers more than self-­improvement: there are loving reflections on marriage and family in small-town Ontario, hilarious travelogues about American obsessions like McMansions and vanity license plates, and a tender documentary of the improbable compassion of strangers for fellow travelers. Of course, there's plenty of self-discovery too.... Lansens has more than a few tales worth telling."

Product Details

BN ID:	2940171612719
Publisher:	Brilliance Audio
Publication date:	02/10/2010
Edition description:	Unabridged

Read an Excerpt

Mary knew what she had to do, and like that final shot of whiskey gunfighters slug back in westerns, she sought courage in Laura Secord.

Mary might have described tearing open the cardboard as something like rapture, enveloped as she was by the heavenly scent of cocoa, and lifted by a sense of well being. Breathing deeply, she peeled the cellophane from one box, and another and another, tossing aside the lids, digging at the confection, shoveling two and three at a time into her unhinged mandible. She didn’t care that chocolate squares were spilling onto the seats and floor as she swiped aside the fluted paper cups. That’s enough, Mary told herself, and then, Just one more.

From the Hardcover edition.

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