The Wife’s Tale by Lori Lansens

You know the feeling? You’ve reading happily away and suddenly, the book has ended. Not that it ended before the story is finished. No, it was quite OK to end when it did. But you want more. More about the main character and how her story is going to continue. Maybe she’ll be OK and maybe not, but that’s not so important. You just want to be there, with her, the woman you now know so well and that you care about. You want to experience more of this book!

Thus it was for me with The Wife’s Tale (2009) by Lori Lansens. I only picked it up because it’s the monthly read for Word Shakers Online Book Club and it was available in the library.

What it’s about:

Mary Gooch is a forty-something woman, living in small-town Canada with her husband, Jimmy Gooch. She’s outrageously fat and is severely hindered by her physical condition. She has problems walking any distance, can’t reach her own feet, and is very lethargic.

A few days before their 25th wedding anniversary, her husband goes missing. At first she thinks he may be doing some extra jobs for work, but when his boss is looking for him too, Mary worries that something happened to Gooch. Not long after this, she discovers a large amount of money in their joint bank account and a note saying that he needs to think and she should spend the money.

Mary’s search for Gooch leads to Los Angeles where Gooch’ mother lives with her husband. Here, Mary gets into some awkward situations and she meet some interesting people. The end of the book is satisfactory, but I would have liked to follow Mary’s life a little longer.

What I thought:

At first, I thought it was going to be one of those relationship books. Poor housewife waiting at the kitchen table for her husband to return, thinking over her relationship with him (high school hunk turned furniture delivery man). But then a fat housewife. Big deal.

But no, it was really good, and it was less about the relationship of Mary and Gooch than about the relationship of Mary with herself and with other people in her (new) life. Mary came out of her shell and found herself under all her fat. The fat also started to shrink.

What I loved was how sensual the book was, especially the first part. We learn all about Mary’s body, her hunger, the wind on her naked body, her aches when she falls over, etc. In the later part of the book, there is less about Mary’s body (although it still plays a role) and more about the people around her.

I didn’t like Mary to start with and I’m not even sure I liked her in the end. I liked her better than before, at least. She turned from a couch potato into a woman with potential. So now I want to know what she’ll be up to next. Still, I don’t think a sequel would work necessarily. The story is told and has ended.

If you want to read something similar, go for The Memory of Running by Ron McLarty. In this book, a fat man called Smithy, who has nothing much to look forward to except more beer and a lousy job, decides to take his bicycle and starts cycling half-way across America. Make that whole-way. On the way he meets lots of interesting people and slowly he starts to find himself and he realizes deep inside he’s not a fat, beer-drinking couch potato. (I liked this book especially because it was so clever: Smithy was so unlikeable and still I wanted to read more of the story. In the end I actually did like him a lot).

Rating: 5/5

I got this book: because it’s the monthly read for Word Shakers Online Book Club

I read this in: Dutch, translated from the English.

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