This is my first official book review that I am putting through out the internet. So let me preface how I found this book. I was wandering around Half Price Bookstore, avoiding the Texas heat and just pretty much creating a stack of books that was taller than me. I came across "A Reliable Wife" and it initially intrigued me. The cover was a dark picture with a woman in a blood red dress from the 1900's. This sparked my inner costume goddess and my English nerd-ation. I mean, symbolism was seeping throughout the cover, so I read the back.
The curtain rises in 1907 during a Wisconsin winter "cold enough to sear the skin from your bones." Ralph Truitt, the leading man whom is obssed with sex, madness and murder, stands at a train station waiting for the woman that responded to his add for a "reliable wife". Being a 58 year old widower, he isnt the man he appears on the outside. Inside he is filled with a deep fear and shame for his strongest passion: Lust.
Catherine Land is the woman that answers the add,claiming she is an "honest woman who spent her life traveling around teaching the Lords word". But as you learn throughout the novel, words are decieving and can make a fool out of anyone. For Miss Land is anything but a honest and virtuous woman. She has spent her life amongest bars and between the legs of various men, getitng drunk and wearing glittering jewels as she smokes ciggarette after cigarette night after night. Catherine answered that add for one reason and that reason alone. To kill Ralph and obtain his money.
The novel is told in a husky sort of whisper, with frequent interruptions of past memories tinted red with emotion. The author actually knows how to eloquently write, and tell a story.
BUT (why is there always a but?)
The author would repeat themselves over and over, making it a pain to read. I also got tired of the excessive talk of Ralph's sexual desires. I understand that that is what makes him who he is, I just believed it should have been toned down. As I kept reading, it got harder to keep flipping the page, only because of the repetitive of everything, forcing the book to unravel at a slow pace.
My Rating- 4 out of 10
Pros- Dark, Symbolism, Proper Grammar
Cons- Extremely sexual, Repetitive, Slow
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