HomeGroupsTalkMoreZeitgeist
Search Site
This site uses cookies to deliver our services, improve performance, for analytics, and (if not signed in) for advertising. By using LibraryThing you acknowledge that you have read and understand our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. Your use of the site and services is subject to these policies and terms.

Results from Google Books

Click on a thumbnail to go to Google Books.

A Reliable Wife by Robert Goolrick
Loading...

A Reliable Wife (edition 2009)

by Robert Goolrick (Author)

MembersReviewsPopularityAverage ratingMentions
4,6093522,442 (3.3)244
Fiction. Literature. HTML:

Rural Wisconsin, 1909. In the bitter cold, Ralph Truitt, a successful businessman, stands alone on a train platform waiting for the woman who answered his newspaper advertisement for "a reliable wife." But when Catherine Land steps off the train from Chicago, she's not the "simple, honest woman" that Ralph is expecting. She is both complex and devious, haunted by a terrible past and motivated by greed. Her plan is simple: she will win this man's devotion, and then, ever so slowly, she will poison him and leave Wisconsin a wealthy widow. What she has not counted on, though, is that Truitt â?? a passionate man with his own dark secrets â??has plans of his own for his new wife. Isolated on a remote estate and imprisoned by relentless snow, the story of Ralph and Catherine unfolds in unimaginable ways.

With echoes of Wuthering Heights and Rebecca, Robert Goolrick's intoxicating debut novel delivers a classic tale of suspenseful seduction, set in a world that seems to have gone temporarily off its axis
… (more)

Member:MHanover10
Title:A Reliable Wife
Authors:Robert Goolrick (Author)
Info:Algonquin Books (2009), Edition: 1, 291 pages
Collections:Your library, Currently reading, Wishlist, To read, Read but unowned, Favorites
Rating:
Tags:to-read

Work Information

A Reliable Wife by Robert Goolrick (Author)

  1. 51
    Fingersmith by Sarah Waters (teelgee)
  2. 41
    Serena by Ron Rash (GCPLreader)
  3. 30
    A Prayer for the Dying by Stewart O'Nan (BookshelfMonstrosity)
    BookshelfMonstrosity: Readers who enjoyed the shivery psychological suspense of A Reliable Wife may also like this novel, set in a small town during a diphtheria epidemic. Both novels are set in late 19th century Wisconsin and focus on characters with dark secrets.… (more)
  4. 20
    Wisconsin Death Trip by Michael Lesy (SmithSJ01)
  5. 00
    Ledoyt by Carol Emshwiller (bertilak)
  6. 00
    Secrets of Eden by Chris Bohjalian (BookshelfMonstrosity)
  7. 00
    The Kept by James Scott (hairball)
  8. 01
    The Quickening by Michelle Hoover (susiesharp)
    susiesharp: These two books had the same feel to them
Loading...

Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book.

No current Talk conversations about this book.

» See also 244 mentions

English (341)  French (3)  Spanish (3)  German (3)  Hungarian (1)  Italian (1)  All languages (352)
Showing 1-5 of 341 (next | show all)
Wisconsin bachelor advertises for a wife. From there it is a story of eroticism, despair, love and loss. Ended up being a very well written story that was very compelling.
  bentstoker | Jan 26, 2024 |
It was just a story about despair.

I loved the plot of this book but overall it felt too plodding and slow for me. For every lovely line or thought there were paragraphs of things that bored me and seemed repetitive.

I think this is really a 2.5 but I will round up.


( )
  hmonkeyreads | Jan 25, 2024 |
Pure poetry of despair and redemption ( )
  jemisonreads | Jan 22, 2024 |
This actually joins my very, very small list of books that i never finished. I read a little over half, and was just hating it enough that i quit reading and read a summary on-line of how it finished. ( )
  karenhmoore | Jan 1, 2024 |
I don't know why I gave it two stars - Way overdone, often read like a Harlequin novel. Utter waste of time. ( )
  Suem330 | Dec 28, 2023 |
Showing 1-5 of 341 (next | show all)
Don't be fooled by the prissy cover or that ironic title. Robert Goolrick's first novel, "A Reliable Wife," isn't just hot, it's in heat: a gothic tale of such smoldering desire it should be read in a cold shower. This is a bodice ripper of a hundred thousand pearly buttons, ripped off one at a time with agonizing restraint. It works only because Goolrick never cracks a smile, never lets on that he thinks all this overwrought sexual frustration is anything but the most serious incantation of longing and despair ever uttered in the dead of night.
 
Through repetitive and rhythmically hypnotic prose, Goolrick drives home the characters' loneliness, sexual yearnings, self-loathing and fear. He infuses his novel with the inevitable notion that things will end badly for this damaged family. But he lets us discover for ourselves the breadth and magnitude of dysfunction and the deadly conspiracy in which Catherine and Ralph are, ironically, both complicit.
added by Shortride | editUSA Today, Carol Memmott (Apr 6, 2009)
 
Set in 1907 Wisconsin, Goolrick's fiction debut (after a memoir, The End of the World as We Know It) gets off to a slow, stylized start, but eventually generates some real suspense. When Catherine Land, who's survived a traumatic early life by using her wits and sexuality as weapons, happens on a newspaper ad from a well-to-do businessman in need of a "reliable wife," she invents a plan to benefit from his riches and his need. Her new husband, Ralph Truitt, discovers she's deceived him the moment she arrives in his remote hometown. Driven by a complex mix of emotions and simple animal attraction, he marries her anyway. After the wedding, Catherine helps Ralph search for his estranged son and, despite growing misgivings, begins to poison him with small doses of arsenic. Ralph sickens but doesn't die, and their story unfolds in ways neither they nor the reader expect. This darkly nuanced psychological tale builds to a strong and satisfying close. ( )
added by ehines | editPublishers Weekly
 

Belongs to Publisher Series

You must log in to edit Common Knowledge data.
For more help see the Common Knowledge help page.
Canonical title
Original title
Alternative titles
Original publication date
People/Characters
Important places
Important events
Related movies
Epigraph
"Be not dishearten'd-Affection shall solve the problems of Freedom yet; Those who love each other shall become invincible." Walt Whitman, "Over the Carnage Rose a Prophetic Voice"
Dedication
For Jeanne Voltz who was better to me than I was to myself with eternal love and gratitude and for my darling brother and sister B and Lindlay.
First words
It was bitter cold, the air electric with all that had not happened yet.
Quotations
"Nothing says hell has to be fire, thought Ralph Truitt, standing in his sober clothes on the platform of a tiny train station in the frozen middle of frozen nowhere."
The thing is, all memory is fiction.
Last words
Disambiguation notice
Publisher's editors
Blurbers
Original language
Canonical DDC/MDS
Canonical LCC

References to this work on external resources.

Wikipedia in English

None

Fiction. Literature. HTML:

Rural Wisconsin, 1909. In the bitter cold, Ralph Truitt, a successful businessman, stands alone on a train platform waiting for the woman who answered his newspaper advertisement for "a reliable wife." But when Catherine Land steps off the train from Chicago, she's not the "simple, honest woman" that Ralph is expecting. She is both complex and devious, haunted by a terrible past and motivated by greed. Her plan is simple: she will win this man's devotion, and then, ever so slowly, she will poison him and leave Wisconsin a wealthy widow. What she has not counted on, though, is that Truitt â?? a passionate man with his own dark secrets â??has plans of his own for his new wife. Isolated on a remote estate and imprisoned by relentless snow, the story of Ralph and Catherine unfolds in unimaginable ways.

With echoes of Wuthering Heights and Rebecca, Robert Goolrick's intoxicating debut novel delivers a classic tale of suspenseful seduction, set in a world that seems to have gone temporarily off its axis

No library descriptions found.

Book description
Haiku summary

LibraryThing Early Reviewers Alum

Robert Goolrick's book A Reliable Wife was available from LibraryThing Early Reviewers.

Current Discussions

None

Popular covers

Quick Links

Rating

Average: (3.3)
0.5 11
1 84
1.5 16
2 206
2.5 55
3 460
3.5 145
4 427
4.5 43
5 192

Is this you?

Become a LibraryThing Author.

Recorded Books

An edition of this book was published by Recorded Books.

» Publisher information page

 

About | Contact | Privacy/Terms | Help/FAQs | Blog | Store | APIs | TinyCat | Legacy Libraries | Early Reviewers | Common Knowledge | 202,657,898 books! | Top bar: Always visible