LORI LANSENS: The Wife’s Tale, Virago, 371 pp, RRP €19.54

Having read Lori Lansen’s first novel, ‘The Girls’, I immediately knew that the characters in this book were going to be multifaceted and full of meaning – and I wasn’t disappointed. Her characters are three-dimensional; their experiences are heartfelt and meaningful, their characteristics are recognisable and you could see yourself or your friends in their shoes.

Mary Gooch is a glutton and fully aware of it; her 302 pounds of flesh are evidence of her eating habits, “she apologized for the way she ate, with a disturbing lack of discrimination”. When she was a little girl her mother took her to the doctor regarding her weight. The doctor classified her as being ‘obese’, a word that Mary doesn’t recognise and translates to ‘obeast’ – a beast that she believes lives inside her and makes her want to eat all the time.

We first meet Mary one evening at her home in Canada with a storm brewing outside. The weather provides intense feelings of pathetic fallacy, as the rain and clouds approaching lead to the bad news that was about to fall upon her.

It’s the night before her twenty-fifth wedding anniversary and she’s waiting for her husband to come home. Mary and Jimmy had got married just out of high school, aged 18. Jimmy was your all-round, handsome athlete; Mary was an overweight girl with no friends. Their union was inexplicable to most people; however, we’re told that the reason they decided to get married was because Mary got pregnant. The night before their wedding, she miscarriages; however, being afraid of losing Jimmy now that there wasn’t a baby to tie them together, Mary keeps mum about this for their entire married life.

Mary’s whole life is a state of denial. Despite her deep love for her husband, their sex life dwindled into nothingness five years before, mainly due to her heaviness and the self-esteem issues that weighed upon her. And now that their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary is upon them, Jimmy fails to come home.

At the beginning of the novel, Mary’s depressed state is so realistic and vivid that you find yourself feeling heavy and down for no apparent reason other than having read about this woman’s miserable self and state of mind. Admittedly what started as a feeling of antipathy towards Mary because I found her to be somewhat pathetic and whiney turned into me rooting for and actually liking her as the story developed.

The days pass and still no sign of Jimmy; Mary resigns herself to her bed with no appetite for life. During this time she cuts her foot on some glass on the floor and her obese body prevents her from being able to bend over and bandage it properly. The result is a mess and the reader is left feeling pitiful and horrified at this woman who allowed herself to reach such a deplorable state, both physically and mentally.

Eventually Jimmy sends a note informing her that he left her $25,000 in their joint bank account which he won on a scratch lottery ticket and that he needed “time to think”. At a loss about what to do next she decides to go after him to get some answers. Armed with a couple of restaurant receipts for an establishment in Toronto she heads there, and then goes on the trip of her lifetime as she heads off to sunny California where everyone is slim, tanned and gorgeous. During this journey she develops a backbone and became a person in her own right, and not just Jimmy Gooch’s wife. She meets people who change her life, and she, in turn changes herself.

Mary Gooch learns to fight her inner demons which are outwardly present in her weight for everyone to see and (as is common in human nature) judge her upon. I myself judged her at the beginning of the book because I thought that her life was based on excuses; however, the strength of character that emerges throughout the rest of the story absolves her from that initial judgement.
Lori Lansens write books for women; however, she is not a chick-lit writer. This is not your run of the mill girl-meets-boy story with a predictable ending but an insightful journey into a woman’s discovery of herself, and all that she’s able to achieve.

Published in Culture and Entertainment, The Sunday Times – May 2, 2010