Bengfort.com

J: Could you possibly think of a more boring topic than Wisconsin in winter? Nothing but cold and snow and dark, right? But even though those descriptions certainly fit Robert Goolrick’s A Reliable Wife, I promise, you will be entertained—if not driven slightly mad.

B: Madness being the key phrase, this book was dark and cold — it’s an enticing read, and it takes you to the places in your mind that you might not like to go. The characters are too real, too identifiable, you know that you’re like them– even though you try so hard not to be.

J: Reading this book is like falling into a deep well of sex-laced insanity. It’s one of the only books we’ve read that I’ve lost sleep over—I stayed up all hours reading, stopping only when my brain shut itself down in protest!

B: I lost sleep even after finishing the book. It sticks with you like a shadow.

J: Hopefully, Ben, you didn’t feel the need to compare the wife in this book to me?

B: I don’t really know what arsenic tastes like, Jaci. Also, which wife?

J: Some might argue that it’s too over-the-top—a palazzo? Poison? Murder? Lies? But, having grown up in the big, empty plains, I’m glad that Goolrick finally gave this part of the country the big operatic story the landscape cries out for.

B: I agree that this story only works in the setting that it does; in a place where raw humanity is not suppressed by culture or society; but is also not allowed to devolve to wildness.

J: I don’t want to give away the ending, but I do want to urge you to read this book. Especially if you think a winter in Wisconsin is boring. He’ll change your mind.