The Wife's Tale: A Novel

I did not want this book to ever end!! I wish there was a sequel about Mary. She reminds me of me in many ways. I could not put the book down. I've read the other two books by this author and enjoyed them too!!! Keep bringing us great reads like this!!

It's a wonderful feeling to say that I knew from the second page of this book that it would be good. Not having read Lansen's earlier novel, The Girls, I now feel envious of those who have, since talent like hers as shown in The Wife's Tale makes me believe all her writing must be wonderful. The Wife's Tale is a novel about Mary Gooch and her life. Her constant battle with food and her body, her ever-present hunger, her ghosts from the past reminding her of better times. Times when she was happy, and carefree, and skinny. It's about her secrets and her husband. Her husband of twenty-five years who she married when she was young and svelte and pregnant, before she gained the weight and lost the baby. Her husband who disappears the night before their anniversary, saying and doing nothing, just leaving. Leaving her with her secrets and hunger until the day she wakes and realizes she doesn't need food. She wakes from her life and chooses to take a step in a new direction, to embark on a journey. To become someone other than the woman who only wears dark navy scrubs, the woman from Leaford who is incredibly obese. To be the woman who solves her own problems. In the journey she takes to find her husband, she finds herself: the Mary without the food. This story was heartbreaking and sad, but also incredibly beautiful and lyrical and literary and uplifting. Lansen weaves Mary's memories into the story which help us to understand her pain, weight issues are something to which most of us can relate. Brutally honest and blunt, occasionally fresh and funny, but always true and real from the perspective of an overweight women who feels helpless, this was a touching message of hope and the power of change and strength in us all. I loved Mary Gooch. I loved her for being honest with me about who she was and the secrets she has. The chocolates, the binges, the tabloids, the obsession. And I loved her for making a choice, for leaving Leaford, for going after her husband, and then changing direction on the way. For following her father's old advice to "take a drink from the hose and push on."

When we travel the hills and valleys of our lives we face those times where we stand at a crossroads and the reality of past challenges butt up against future hopes and expectations. There are moments we decide to go one way or another and once the decision is made our lives are irreversibly altered. During some of these moments dreams can be shattered and hearts broken especially when the results of certain decisions are made for us by others we love and trust that it seems we did not know at all. But when the dust settles are we left heartbroken or maybe heart hopeful. Mary Gooch is standing at that crossroads in her life when her husband on the eve of their 25 anniversary decides to park his delivery van after winning the lottery and leave her to go "find himself". Mary had been Jimmy Gooch's wife since she was 18 years old and has no idea who or what she is if not this person who lives in a small Canadian town going through the motions of day-to-day existence with him. Well that is not completely true because Mary also knows that she is an obese woman who has battled a hunger her entire life that only food could fulfill. Food was her friend when she was lonely, her ally in getting through stress and the one solace that made her feel like she had a purpose in her life. But when her husband disappears she has to move out of the comfort of her relationship with food and find a new way to satisfy the feeling of emptiness this situation has created. Mary questions whether she capable of doing anything alone but decides that regardless of her size, shape or fear of the unknown she has to find her husband regardless of where he has gone. But when Mary goes in search of her husband and she gets on a plane for the first time in her life figuring out how to fit into the airplane seat is the least of her problems. Her overweight status causes her to battle fatigue, her gentle nature sets her up to be taken advantage of and her fear of change pushes her to a new starvation that even food cannot satisfy. Mary challenges herself to show that she is more than a number on a scale or a sheltered wife. She proves that she is a capable woman regardless of where Gooch may be hiding. Her mother-in-law once an enemy becomes an ally, strangers becomes friends and new situations become invigorating instead of overwhelming. Mary may have lost her identity when her husband left and possibly her money when her purse goes missing but it turns out that neither of those things defined her and once she starts knocking on doors and tearing down walls she finds out that she is not that person on her passport. Sometimes you have to leave dreams behind to find a reality that is better than anything you thought of imagined. What an amazing person Mary Gooch is regardless that she has a weight issue but because of it. She is indicative of every one of us as we all have some demon that chases us, some fear we pretend doesn't exist and issues we try to ignor

Mary Gooch is quite a memorable character, one that we can learn a great deal from. On the eve of her 25th wedding anniversary and weighing in at 302 pounds, Mary is left waiting for her husband Jimmy to come home from work, but as the evening wears on she knows, can just feel it in the pit of her stomach, right next to that aching hunger, that Jimmy won't be home, he won't come back to their life or their anniversary party. Ever since she was young, Mary has been battling the "obeast", that driving hunger for food, that something that will satisfy her. During her few thin years she met the handsome athletic Jimmy Gooch and their romance was more then she could ever imagine. Then the disappointments and worries came, the weight was back. Jimmy swore that he still loved her, but the well worn path from her bedroom to the refrigerator was something that could no longer be avoided. To find her husband, Mary knew that she had to break away from her very small world in Canada and board an airplane to California to confront a mother in law that detested her, but she would do that, to bring her Jimmy home. In the process of finding her wayward husband, Mary found the good in people, the good in herself and a way to keep the "obeast" quiet. Though I've never been a fan of the woman trying to find herself type of book, I loved Mary's story. It wasn't all tied up with a neat bow because a man loved her and they lived happily ever after. Mary came across as a real woman, with real fears and real hopes. And in her journey to put her life back together she found good people, people who appreciated her for who she was, not what she looked like or how much money she had. She was willing to put herself out there, to show the world all her warts and maybe, just maybe, she could find the peace that would finally satisfy her.

This is a strangely compelling book about Mary Gooch, a very large canadian woman who has an "obeast" inside of her. She is extremely obese and has been married to a childhood sweetheart for 25 years (they thought she was pregnant when they married right out of high-school) she wasn't. Gooch her husband leaves her on the eve of their 25th wedding anniversary without any notice and Mary starts looking for him at his mother's in California, with the aid of $25,000 that Gooch had put in her bank account. Mary has never been out of her hometown in Canada and she flies to California, gets her purse stolen, can't get any money without ID, finds a friend with three children, meets a mexican day worker, gives out money like it is water, stops eating because she is nauseated everytime she thinks of food instead of eating everything that was slower than her when she lived her past life and finds herself, a thinner, worthwhile person who realizes that her husband is never coming back. The ending is kind of weak, but fits the story line very well. All in all an interesting book, especially if the reader has ever had a problem that they can't seem to solve, ie; overeating. An enjoyable read.