Book: A Reliable Wife by Robert Goolrick

Robert Goolrick's A Reliable Wife was published in March of last year and since then has gone trade paperback. Noises were being made about it not too long ago and now it's on The New York Times Best-Seller List. My biggest question is Why?

Since the book was relatively new when I first got my copy last year, I didn't have any real expectations about it. The plot was intriguing and the writing seemed solid. But by the time I finished the novel I couldn't shake the feeling that I already knew the story. Several elements of the story were sadly predictable and the ending was unsatisfying. Overall, I was not happy with the book and disappointed I spent so much money on it.

If anyone has read both Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton and Waltz into Darkness by Cornell Woolrich, this book will feel very, very familiar to you. If you have watched Original Sin, starring Angelina Jolie and Antonio Banderas, then there is almost no need to read A Reliable Wife at all. (Which is essentially the same except for the setting, which in the movie is warm and tropical, while the book is set in a cold and isolated town like in Ethan Frome.)

As you can divine from works I have just listed, A Reliable Wife is not very original. This is my primary complaint with the novel. While it is true that many books repeat elements that seem to be inherent in the subject matter that the author is writing about, in this case Goolrick fails to put a twist on the whole murderous mail order bride plot that makes it wholly his own. He simply lifts elements and plot twists from other literary and movie sources and incorporated it into his book to create what is essentially a bodice-ripper's attempt at serious fiction. (There is some serious sexual content in this book.)

Goolrick fails to communicate the stark isolation of living in the country that Wharton captured in Ethan Frome or even the sexual passion that burned in Jolie and Banderas' characters. Goolrick only manages to skim the top of human passion and emotion with A Reliable Wife and this is what makes the novel a difficult read.

The only clever thing about the book at all is the title: A Reliable Wife, which one man told me is an oxymoron.