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A Reliable Wife  By  cover art

A Reliable Wife

By: Robert Goolrick
Narrated by: Mark Feuerstein
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Editorial reviews

Stinging needles of snow plunge rural Wisconsin into isolating despair as this erotic psychological thriller unravels in the autumn of 1907. Wealthy businessman Ralph Truitt, remote and severe, awaits his dowdy mail-order bride on a gloomy railroad platform, too restrained even to shiver in public. "I am a simple honest woman," she has written him.

When glossy-haired Catherine Land, his young wife-to-be, slips off the train, she collapses Ralph with her unexpected beauty and stillness. Ralph, in turn, shatters Catherine with his growly security and kindness. Each is deceiving the other. Tony Moretti, Ralph's ruthless estranged son, eventually sinks their schemes. A Reliable Wife is Gothic suspense, so secrets leak, blood spills, arsenic drips, and past wrongs are avenged.

Novelist Robert Goolrick knots chilling plot twists with ruined characters. Brittle Catherine buries her depraved adulthood by cloning the "manners of her fellow travelers exactly", down to cleaning her own hairbrush so maids will remark on her good breeding. She holes up in public libraries and steams through encyclopedias and card catalogs, collecting facts for her reinvention as a virginal missionary's daughter. Ralph punishes his roaring sensuality with ice water and listless dinner parties. He is a joyless grind. Love, meanwhile, bores Tony with its "lack of event...the same steady heartbeat".

Mark Feuerstein narrates A Reliable Wife in hypnotic murmurs to resist competing with Goolrick's lush, poetic language and explicit sexual dialogue. He bundles his velvety reading voice into a steady purr, lulling and tranquilizing against overwrought subtexts of hysteria. Feuerstein is unhurried, though never halting. He chronicles Catherine and Ralph's broken tangle with unadorned inflections and conspiratorial silences. Feuerstein invests his characters with authentic hearts, even if they, themselves, are not in true possession of one. Nita Rao

Publisher's summary

Robert Goolrick's riveting debut novel is both foreboding and sensual. When a wealthy man first meets his mail-order bride in 1907, he realizes this statuesque beauty is anything but a "simple missionary's daughter." But he doesn't know of her devious plan to leave Wisconsin as a rich widow. Nor does she know of the furious demons he longs to unleash during the lonely months of snowbound isolation.
©2009 Robert Goolrick (P)2009 Recorded Books, LLC

Critic reviews

"A sublime murder ballad that doesn't turn out at all the way one might expect." ( Kirkus Reviews)
"This darkly nuanced psychological tale builds to a strong and satisfying close." ( Publishers Weekly)

What listeners say about A Reliable Wife

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  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars

Tolerable

I was disappointed in this book. It has an interesting premise, but in the end is too predictable. Be aware that the author does dwell on erotic details. It isn't pornographic; quite sweet, actually. But it does go on.

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7 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars

Disappointed

The book seemed to promise much. Like the landscape it described it began in a spare, austere way. As the story advanced so did the expectation of a fulfilling and rich development. Sadly, it faltered and eventually, sadly, went nowhere. It was just a tale of sex, sex, and more sex. In all fairness, I must admit that all the reviews I've read rave about this book so I am in the unfortunate minority of disappointed readers.

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6 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    1 out of 5 stars

Good premise, a little lude

The story is well written and has a good plot line, but... (though I am not a prude by any means) the author does go a little too far with the continual reference to sexual ideas and references. Also, the detail in which the author takes you into almost makes this an NC-17 rated book.

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5 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars

drudery to listen to!

Sometimes, I cannot for the life of me understand why certain books become so popular. This one is written in a very repetitive style (yawn) and there's not much of a plot, but it's stretched out for many hours. I jumped to the end so I could see what happened, but I sure didn't enjoy the 6 hrs I did listen to.

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2 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    1 out of 5 stars

Brings Winter Blues to new Level

I am a big audio listener. I love Mark Feuerstein, the narrator, but I think he might have been the wrong narrator for this book. The book was so purple on its own that it required little inflection and perhaps a Midwestern accent, a voice that sounds less modern. I don't know if that's what distracted me, but I didn't like the book at all. Too bleak, too repetitive. No need for an author to keep recapping. None of the characters were likable and I could neither feel empathy for them nor much interest. Being inside this book made me feel like the many characters in it who went inexplicably insane.

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1 person found this helpful

  • Overall
    1 out of 5 stars

Whatever

The narrator ruins the book. Don't go there.

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1 person found this helpful

  • Overall
    1 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    1 out of 5 stars

Pathetic

This is story of pathetic individuals who led pathetic lives. They were cruel and self centered. The story was one of the saddest and most pathetic stories I ever heard. Until the last sentence when all was forgiven. Pathetic! I felt sorry for the narrator, who was terrific!

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  • Overall
    1 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    1 out of 5 stars

skin like oiled earth

Ever wonder what a book would be like if there were no good guys, where everyone was not only flawed, but down right nasty ugly? This is it. Every character in this book is mean and nasty. They care for no one but themselves and I did not care for any of them. I listened to four and a half hours and could not listen to any more. The farther along the book went, the more I hated every single character in the book.

The book is filled with lots of imagery and prose like a woman whose skin is like oiled earth.

This is the punk music of literature.

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13 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    1 out of 5 stars

A Reliable Wife?

This book is badly written, trite, and tossed!

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1 person found this helpful

  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars

Depressing!

I'm surprised in reading the reviews, that more don't speak to the sexual content--pornography, in my opinion. I almost didn't finish it, but there was enough of a story line to want to find out how it ended. As bawdry as it was, I don't think it used the F-word once, which seems to be a mainstay in most modern books. The amount of horrible deaths and happenings in this rural area seemed totally unrealistic. Some complained about the narration, but I actually liked the reader.

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1 person found this helpful