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Heading Out to Wonderful
In 1948, a mysterious and charismatic man arrives in a small Virginia town carrying two suitcases--one contains his worldly possessions, the other is full of money. He soon inserts himself into the town's daily life, taking a job in the local butcher shop and befriending the owner and his wife and their son. But the passion that develops between the man and the wife of the town's wealthiest citizen sets in motion a series of events that not only upset the quiet town but threaten to destroy both him and the woman.
296 pages, Hardcover
First published June 12, 2012
243 people are currently reading
6191 people want to read
About the author
Robert Goolrick
17 books474 followersI was born in a small university town in Virginia, a town in which, besides teaching, the chief preoccupations were drinking bourbon and telling complex anecdotes, stories about people who lived down the road, stories about ancestors who had died a hundred years before. For southerners, the past is as real as the present; it is not even past, as Faulkner said.
I went to Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore and then lived in Europe for several years, thinking that I would be an actor or a painter, two things for which I had a passion that outran my talent. I wrote an early novel, and then my parents disinherited me, so I moved to New York, which is where small-town people move to do and say the things they can't do or say at home, and I ended up working in advertising, a profession that feeds on young people who have an amorphous talent and no particular focus.
Fired in my early fifties, the way people are in advertising, I tried to figure out what to do with the rest of my life, and I came back around to the pastime that had filled the days and nights of my childhood: telling complex anecdotes about the living and the dead. I think, when we read, we relish and devour remarkable voices, but these are, in the end, stories we remember.
I live in a tiny town in Virginia in a great old farmhouse on a wide and serene river with my dog, whose name is Preacher. Since he has other interests besides listening to my stories, I tell them to you.
I went to Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore and then lived in Europe for several years, thinking that I would be an actor or a painter, two things for which I had a passion that outran my talent. I wrote an early novel, and then my parents disinherited me, so I moved to New York, which is where small-town people move to do and say the things they can't do or say at home, and I ended up working in advertising, a profession that feeds on young people who have an amorphous talent and no particular focus.
Fired in my early fifties, the way people are in advertising, I tried to figure out what to do with the rest of my life, and I came back around to the pastime that had filled the days and nights of my childhood: telling complex anecdotes about the living and the dead. I think, when we read, we relish and devour remarkable voices, but these are, in the end, stories we remember.
I live in a tiny town in Virginia in a great old farmhouse on a wide and serene river with my dog, whose name is Preacher. Since he has other interests besides listening to my stories, I tell them to you.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 1,480 reviews
September 9, 2012
I loved A Reliable Wife, and Goolrick had me for the first half of Heading Out to Wonderful. But I was so saddened by the unease of the 5 year-old boy taken along to many rendezvous between two lovers. I started to sense that the plot was getting too dark, with no hope of redemption, but it got even worse than that. Too much blood spilled after such a beautiful beginning... Also I really wondered where Beebo got all his money (maybe I missed something?) to buy land for himself and his adulterous sweetheart. I wanted some of these characters to break out of the tangled web they wove or found themselves in, and though there was one scene where life won over death, even that was soon tainted by the tragic trajectory this novel took. I am not a reader who always needs happy endings, but this was way too dark for me. I do admire Goolrick's writing style and ability to get inside his characters' heads. With a title like Heading out to Wonderful, excuse me -- I expected a little more sunshine!
May 22, 2020
Heading out to Wonderful by Robert Goolrick was a book I purchased for my kindle by mistake and thought what the heck will give it a go as the process of retuning it just seemed like too much bother.
I was pleasantly surprised after reading the first chapter of this novel as the prose, the characters and the plot had me totally hooked.
The novel is set in the small town of Brownsburg, a quiet and sleepy town in the valley of Virginia. In the summer of 1948 a stranger arrives in town by the name of Charlie Beale who recently returned back from war in Europe. Charlie's few possessions include two suitcases containing a set of butcher knives and case full of cash. Charlie keeps himself to himself and gets a job at the local butchers and it is here Charlie encounters the beautiful wife of wealthy Boaty Glass and instantly becomes obsessed with this young woman and from this first encounter the story becomes a wonderful suspenseful read which was hard to put down.
I found heading out to wonderful a captivating read with well formed and interesting characters and a wonderful suspenseful plot. Although this is a story which has been told over and over, Robert Goolrick's ability to write with passion and imaginary that is seldom found in books like this make this book such a passionate and compelling read with twists and turns to keep the reader interested.
There are certainly unanswered questions in the novel but I always applaud a writer for this as it makes the reader think for themselves and makes books like Heading Out to Wonderful great discussion reads for book clubs.
Really enjoyed this novel and will add more of this author's books to my library.
I was pleasantly surprised after reading the first chapter of this novel as the prose, the characters and the plot had me totally hooked.
The novel is set in the small town of Brownsburg, a quiet and sleepy town in the valley of Virginia. In the summer of 1948 a stranger arrives in town by the name of Charlie Beale who recently returned back from war in Europe. Charlie's few possessions include two suitcases containing a set of butcher knives and case full of cash. Charlie keeps himself to himself and gets a job at the local butchers and it is here Charlie encounters the beautiful wife of wealthy Boaty Glass and instantly becomes obsessed with this young woman and from this first encounter the story becomes a wonderful suspenseful read which was hard to put down.
I found heading out to wonderful a captivating read with well formed and interesting characters and a wonderful suspenseful plot. Although this is a story which has been told over and over, Robert Goolrick's ability to write with passion and imaginary that is seldom found in books like this make this book such a passionate and compelling read with twists and turns to keep the reader interested.
There are certainly unanswered questions in the novel but I always applaud a writer for this as it makes the reader think for themselves and makes books like Heading Out to Wonderful great discussion reads for book clubs.
Really enjoyed this novel and will add more of this author's books to my library.
July 1, 2012
I hardly know where to begin. I just finished this book, and I feel as though I haven't resurfaced, as though my eyes are fogged and my mind is still not my own. I haven't been this swept away by a novel in a long time. Goolrick's prose is stunning and spellbinding and the story he weaves is brilliant, devastating, very real and very human. I wish I knew how to describe his weaving together of landscape, small town southern life, movies, and baseball to create a setting that is as much a character as Charlie, Sylvan, or Sam. I can say that the effect is magical. The human characters are wonderful as well - rich, complex, and utterly believable. Except for the bad guy, these are people I either already knew or found myself wanting to know; the ones I didn't simply love I liked a whole lot. I am so very glad I treated myself to this book - you will be, too!
March 6, 2018
I am perplexed as to why this book doesn't have a higher rating. The writing, the story and the characters are spot on. Highly recommend.
March 13, 2013
Robert Goolrick is a masterful storyteller. He tells stories the old fashioned way: long and languidly, and full of description. Love, especially a great love, never goes out of style. Goolrick delivers. He writes a big love story in a small town. Everyone is involved, right from the first Annual Oyster Fest deep in midsummer, when Charlie shows his physical prowess and Sylvan wears her dark glasses and her red lipstick.
Sylvan Glass. And Sylvan herself—she was just as pretty as her name:
We sense right at the start that a storm is on the horizon, but I don’t think any of us are prepared for the finale. But by then Goolrick has led us long and well, and we react like his town folk, good people all. We feel helpless in the face of such a love, and wish we’d never known it.
But I have to mention my favorite character, though I doubt I would have ever gotten close to her, if I lived there in Brownsburg. Claudie is like none other, with long, thin fingers “like the tines of a fork” and blessed with a special skill to sew like no one else. She created clothes for the townspeople, especially for the lovely Sylvan who wanted those dresses she saw in films and magazines and had a figure to match the finery. I nearly wept with admiration and joy to read of Claudie arriving in front of the town at the end:
Sylvan Glass. And Sylvan herself—she was just as pretty as her name:
“She had a country face, young, probably not much more than twenty, if that…Her lips were a crimson slash, her hair pulled up in gleaming blonde waves on top of her head, held with tortoise-shell combs studded with rhinestones. She wore dark sunglasses, a thing no other woman in town even thought to own…She had a perfect figure, rounded, soft and fleshy for a young girl, although she seemed willowy next to her bulky husband…”
We sense right at the start that a storm is on the horizon, but I don’t think any of us are prepared for the finale. But by then Goolrick has led us long and well, and we react like his town folk, good people all. We feel helpless in the face of such a love, and wish we’d never known it.
But I have to mention my favorite character, though I doubt I would have ever gotten close to her, if I lived there in Brownsburg. Claudie is like none other, with long, thin fingers “like the tines of a fork” and blessed with a special skill to sew like no one else. She created clothes for the townspeople, especially for the lovely Sylvan who wanted those dresses she saw in films and magazines and had a figure to match the finery. I nearly wept with admiration and joy to read of Claudie arriving in front of the town at the end:
Next came Claudie Wiley, dressed, fantastically, as though for a Negro Baptist wedding in New York City, bright in fuschia, cut from a pattern she had found in the back of Vogue magazine, and adapted to suit her figure, with a hat to match, and a veil, and shoes, all the same intense color, the color of sunset, the last burst of color before darkness falls.She was some kind of character, with a life and a mind of her own. She is worthy of a book devoted just to her.
July 30, 2014
I admit up front that I was not a fan of Robert Goolrick's previous novel The Reliable Wife, so I was a little reluctant to pick up his new one called Heading Out to Wonderful. Luckily I had a little prompting from Craig Popelars at Algonquin, who told me that he thought I'd love it. As usual, he was right. Damn his eyes.
If you read enough books or watch enough movies, after a while you develop certain expectations built into certain plot points. Thus, in chapter one when a mysterious drifter rolls into a small Southern town with nothing but his truck and two suitcases, and when those two suitcases are filled with nothing but cash and a set of the sharpest butcher knives anyone has ever seen, you know that by the last chapter there's no way that everything can end well. Just a fact of fictional life.
That's essentially what happens in Goolrick's book, but he does stand certain of the reader's expectations on their heads, and that's what makes for an intense but heartfelt read. You know something bad is going to happen, but it's not precisely clear at first just what path the badness is going to take: will somebody end up butchered & barbecued, a la Fried Green Tomatoes? Will the evil spring from the handsome stranger, or will it be exacted upon him by the small, xenophobic town? Is the handsome stranger's intense relationship with the young boy more insidious than it appears on the surface or is it completely innocent?
Add in a curious five year-old narrator, a small town full of busybodies, a racial divide, old time religion, a near-death resuscitation, and a man who's so rich and so mean, he has to buy himself a pretty young mountain girl for a wife, and you've got the makings of a pretty great story.
The opening paragraphs are some of the best meditations on memory that I have ever read. The book is narrated by Sam, who is an old man looking back on what happened when the drifter came to town and his family took him in:
"The thing is, all memory is fiction. You have to remember that. Of course, there are things that actually, certifiably happened, things where you can pinpoint the day, the hour, and the minute. When you think about it, though, those things mostly seem to happen to other people.
This story actually happened, and it happened pretty much the way I'm going to tell it to you. It's a true story, as much as six decades of remembering and telling can allow it to be true. Time changes things, and you don't always get everything right. You remember a little thing clear as a bell...while other things, big things even, come completely disconnected and no longer have any shape or sound. The little things seem more real than some of the big things....I'm not young any more, so sometimes I can't tell what things are the things I remember and what things are just things that other people told me They tell me things I did, and a lot of them I don't remember, but most people around here aren't liars, so I just go on and believe them, until it seems that I actually do remember the things they say."
This is not exactly a Southern gothic tale, but it has elements of that. But mostly it's the story of mountain people after the war, who are on the cusp of modernity and who know their quiet, charmed way of life won't last forever. It's the story of otherwise good people who choose to let evil into their hearts, and the blinding love of a small boy for a man he calls Beebo, who instinctively knows something about protection but is too innocent to understand what happens around him. I highly recommend it.
If you read enough books or watch enough movies, after a while you develop certain expectations built into certain plot points. Thus, in chapter one when a mysterious drifter rolls into a small Southern town with nothing but his truck and two suitcases, and when those two suitcases are filled with nothing but cash and a set of the sharpest butcher knives anyone has ever seen, you know that by the last chapter there's no way that everything can end well. Just a fact of fictional life.
That's essentially what happens in Goolrick's book, but he does stand certain of the reader's expectations on their heads, and that's what makes for an intense but heartfelt read. You know something bad is going to happen, but it's not precisely clear at first just what path the badness is going to take: will somebody end up butchered & barbecued, a la Fried Green Tomatoes? Will the evil spring from the handsome stranger, or will it be exacted upon him by the small, xenophobic town? Is the handsome stranger's intense relationship with the young boy more insidious than it appears on the surface or is it completely innocent?
Add in a curious five year-old narrator, a small town full of busybodies, a racial divide, old time religion, a near-death resuscitation, and a man who's so rich and so mean, he has to buy himself a pretty young mountain girl for a wife, and you've got the makings of a pretty great story.
The opening paragraphs are some of the best meditations on memory that I have ever read. The book is narrated by Sam, who is an old man looking back on what happened when the drifter came to town and his family took him in:
"The thing is, all memory is fiction. You have to remember that. Of course, there are things that actually, certifiably happened, things where you can pinpoint the day, the hour, and the minute. When you think about it, though, those things mostly seem to happen to other people.
This story actually happened, and it happened pretty much the way I'm going to tell it to you. It's a true story, as much as six decades of remembering and telling can allow it to be true. Time changes things, and you don't always get everything right. You remember a little thing clear as a bell...while other things, big things even, come completely disconnected and no longer have any shape or sound. The little things seem more real than some of the big things....I'm not young any more, so sometimes I can't tell what things are the things I remember and what things are just things that other people told me They tell me things I did, and a lot of them I don't remember, but most people around here aren't liars, so I just go on and believe them, until it seems that I actually do remember the things they say."
This is not exactly a Southern gothic tale, but it has elements of that. But mostly it's the story of mountain people after the war, who are on the cusp of modernity and who know their quiet, charmed way of life won't last forever. It's the story of otherwise good people who choose to let evil into their hearts, and the blinding love of a small boy for a man he calls Beebo, who instinctively knows something about protection but is too innocent to understand what happens around him. I highly recommend it.
March 10, 2013
I'm certain I noticed this book first due to the author, Robert Goolrick. I had read Reliable Wife and wanted to see what Goolrick would do this time out. Also, I immediately fell in love with the title, Heading Out to Wonderful. The imagery of this drew me right in. Add the quote from the fly leaf "Let me tell you something son. When you're young, and you head out to wonderful, everything is fresh and bright as a brand-new penny, but before you get to wonderful you're going to have to pass through all right. And when you get to all right, stop and take a good, long look, because that may be as far as you're ever going to go." and I knew I had to read it as soon as it hit our shelves.
There were parts of Heading Out to Wonderful that reminded me of Sharyn McCrumb's Ballad series, and yet different. It's that old time America, in the hills of Virginia setting, that promises peace and simplicity. The story takes place in post World War II, 1948 to be exact. The town, Brownsburg, Virginia, a place Goolrick describes as "the kind of town that existed right after the war, where the terrible American wanting hadn't touched yet, where most people lived a simple life without yearning for things they couldn't have", etc.
Charlie Beale wanders into town, out of nowhere, in his truck, 2 suitcases on the seat, one well-worn with his clothes and steel butcher knives and the other, made out of tin, filled with money. You're not quite certain where he came from but he tells the reader, he's back from war and his daddy's dead. All you know is he wants some land and a place to work and not much else. He soon finds a tract of land outside the town, by the river, and a job with the only shop that sells meat and becomes part of the lives of the owner, Will, his wife Alma and their young son, Sam. Sam calls Charlie Beebo and it sticks. All this sounds so innocent and yet, somehow I knew before the story was done that it was not going to end well. You can see the beauty of it and yet you know it can't last.
I won't tell you much more than that. Heading Out to Wonderful is a story filled to the brim with obsession, power, and passion. It is sensuously erotic in the way that only Goolrick can write it. Throughout Goolrick serenades us with mountain songs and this book begs a play list. I can hear Eva Cassidy singing The Water is Wide, maybe not the version the author intended but one of my favorites. I found myself searching out Bluegrass man, Mac Wiseman. I don't think his song More Pretty Girls than One was quoted and I bet, Charlie Beale wouldn't have heeded it anyway.
There were a couple of things I couldn't figure out and at first these annoyed me but then, I thought, the few questions remaining for me might have been left so on purpose. They are talking points and like Reliable Wife, Heading Out to Wonderful should make a great book discussion.
There were parts of Heading Out to Wonderful that reminded me of Sharyn McCrumb's Ballad series, and yet different. It's that old time America, in the hills of Virginia setting, that promises peace and simplicity. The story takes place in post World War II, 1948 to be exact. The town, Brownsburg, Virginia, a place Goolrick describes as "the kind of town that existed right after the war, where the terrible American wanting hadn't touched yet, where most people lived a simple life without yearning for things they couldn't have", etc.
Charlie Beale wanders into town, out of nowhere, in his truck, 2 suitcases on the seat, one well-worn with his clothes and steel butcher knives and the other, made out of tin, filled with money. You're not quite certain where he came from but he tells the reader, he's back from war and his daddy's dead. All you know is he wants some land and a place to work and not much else. He soon finds a tract of land outside the town, by the river, and a job with the only shop that sells meat and becomes part of the lives of the owner, Will, his wife Alma and their young son, Sam. Sam calls Charlie Beebo and it sticks. All this sounds so innocent and yet, somehow I knew before the story was done that it was not going to end well. You can see the beauty of it and yet you know it can't last.
I won't tell you much more than that. Heading Out to Wonderful is a story filled to the brim with obsession, power, and passion. It is sensuously erotic in the way that only Goolrick can write it. Throughout Goolrick serenades us with mountain songs and this book begs a play list. I can hear Eva Cassidy singing The Water is Wide, maybe not the version the author intended but one of my favorites. I found myself searching out Bluegrass man, Mac Wiseman. I don't think his song More Pretty Girls than One was quoted and I bet, Charlie Beale wouldn't have heeded it anyway.
There were a couple of things I couldn't figure out and at first these annoyed me but then, I thought, the few questions remaining for me might have been left so on purpose. They are talking points and like Reliable Wife, Heading Out to Wonderful should make a great book discussion.
October 19, 2012
An odd book--a very odd book. I'm rather at a loss as to what to say about it. Heading Out to Wonderful has an intriguing start. Goolrick is quite good at foreshadowing and you want to read on to find out what on earth happened to this narrator. The problem is that it takes soooooo long to get answers. The story unfolds slowly and the writing is, at times, beautiful. Often it's just plain odd. This progression isn't too bad at first, but it ultimately turns out to be a lllooonnnggg slog. The story is narrated by an old man, Sam, who is looking back to when he was five years old. A mysterious man, Charlie Beale, appears one day in his little town. The people aren't too welcoming to strangers, but Charlie wins them over with his charm and generosity, especially Sam. Charlie takes him places and shows him things, and Sam worships him. Then, one day, beautiful Sylvan shows up in Sam's father's butcher shop where Charlie works. Charlie immediately becomes obsessed with her. We will hear over and over again, how much Charlie loves Sylvan. It will be beaten into our brains that Charlie loves Sylvan. We will be begging for Goolrick to stop telling us how much Charlie loves Sylvan. And you will wonder why oh why Charlie loves this vacuous woman. Not surprisingly, the story turns very dark. Charlie begins to take Sam places where no five-year-old should be and shows him things no five-year-old should see. And amazingly, Sam's overprotective parents let him go with Charlie, even when the warning bells start shrieking. These dangerous missions, as you can probably guess, involve Sylvan. And then they involve her powerful, jealous husband. Now we begin to see just what mysterious Charlie really is--a selfish bastard who, for reasons that are not explained and that I cannot begin to understand, ALWAYS involves five-year-old Sam in his perilous, tawdry trysts. The story then descends from darkness to madness. The ending is so odd and over-the-top, I couldn't believe it. I think Goolrick tries to convince us that Charlie and Sylvan are golden, mythic lovers who have forever changed the lives of the people they encountered. That's true, but they did not change the lives of people in a good way. In fact, they damaged Sam for life. I couldn't think of a more awful and deserved ending for these self-centered lovers. I gave Heading Out to Wonderful two stars for originality, but what I really mean is "oddity."
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
April 26, 2012
I loved A Reliable Wife so was excited to get a copy of Goolrick's newest book. This one is about a stranger, Charlie Beale, who one day appears in a small Virginia town and works his way into the affections of the people. But when he falls for the wife of the town's richest man, we know it's only a matter of time before things go awry.
I just love Goolrick's writing . . . opening up one of his books is like sinking into a comfortable chair. I just feel myself going awwww. . . . this is writing I can just fall into . . . it's not even like he's writing, it's like falling into the story without even having to work at it. Not that Goolrick's stories are sweet or comfortable...not at all. They are dark and suspenseful . . . and just plain page turners. I highly recommend this book.
I just love Goolrick's writing . . . opening up one of his books is like sinking into a comfortable chair. I just feel myself going awwww. . . . this is writing I can just fall into . . . it's not even like he's writing, it's like falling into the story without even having to work at it. Not that Goolrick's stories are sweet or comfortable...not at all. They are dark and suspenseful . . . and just plain page turners. I highly recommend this book.
May 12, 2019
Sam Haislett is five, six years old in the story, telling it later in his sixties. Sam says of the story he's about to tell, "Was I damaged by it, they want to know, wounded in some way? And I always say no. I don't think I was hurt by it. But I was changed, changed deeply and forever in ways I realize more and more every day. Anyway, it's too late now to go back, to take that rock out of the river, the one that changed the course of the water's flow." Sam's story begins with Charlie Beale coming to town. Nobody knows where he comes from, but he makes friends right away with Sam's parents, Will and Alma. He works for Will in his butcher shop. Goolrick paints a vivid picture of Charlie Beale in a wonderful Southern storytelling voice. Beale is more comfortable sleeping on the ground out by the river, he's industrious in the butcher shop, he keeps a diary, smokes Lucky Strikes, and he grows so fond of Sam that he becomes like a second father to him. Of course, Beale falls in love, and the story is about the passion of his life, and even though Sam says at the beginning that he was not wounded, I think the story is about how Charlie and his love wounded each other and Sam. That's one of the truest beauties of a good fiction, you don't necessarily have to believe everything it says. Goolrick's descriptions of each character is skilled and eloquent, sometimes coming from the conversation of other characters in the book. Will says of his old childhood friend, Boaty Glass, "Nobody likes him,.....not even me. Not any more. He's no more like the boy I knew than Eleanor Roosevelt. And it ain't just because he's rich. He was a nice boy, big, but not like he is now. Now he's just plain gross. Got a hillbilly wife he wears like a ring on his little finger."
The place of Brownsburg, Virginia lives and breathes as much as any character in the novel. Protagonist, Charlie Beale falls in love with the country; "the landscape he walks is an endless cascade of loss and dying and coming to life again, and he feels the immense silence of the dead and the eternal pulse of the living in the soles of his feet. He is in the valley of the Blue Ridge Mountains of Viginia, on flatland by the Maury River. He is cradled in the palm of the valley as a mother holds an egg." Charlie Beale is proficient at butchering and baseball and falls in love with the land and a woman. This is the story of his passion told at times in the meandering voice of a Southern storyteller, but each layer is a wash of watercolor, with sometimes the stain of oil and blood. All the meandering is like the rivulets and brooks that run to sea. They start off small and turn into something powerful.
The place of Brownsburg, Virginia lives and breathes as much as any character in the novel. Protagonist, Charlie Beale falls in love with the country; "the landscape he walks is an endless cascade of loss and dying and coming to life again, and he feels the immense silence of the dead and the eternal pulse of the living in the soles of his feet. He is in the valley of the Blue Ridge Mountains of Viginia, on flatland by the Maury River. He is cradled in the palm of the valley as a mother holds an egg." Charlie Beale is proficient at butchering and baseball and falls in love with the land and a woman. This is the story of his passion told at times in the meandering voice of a Southern storyteller, but each layer is a wash of watercolor, with sometimes the stain of oil and blood. All the meandering is like the rivulets and brooks that run to sea. They start off small and turn into something powerful.
August 22, 2012
This is one of the silliest books I have ever read. There is just so much wrong with it that it's hard to know where to start: is it the plot, the dialogue, the narrative, or the characters ?
Why would a man bring a 6-year old boy along on his trysts with his married lover and swear the child to secrecy? He didn't need to babysit. He didn't need the company. And why did the child's parents let him continue to accompany the man long after they suspected and then knew where he was going? And why, please tell me, when the child underwent a personality change and began acting out horribly did the parents not suspect that the burden of secrecy was a factor? And why would both man and boy take out their frustrations on the beloved dog?
Why would a woman, no matter how stupid, continue to live with a man who beat her brutally when she knew she was actually richer than he was, once she owned half the property in the county? And why would her lover continue to see her, knowing that it lead her husband to keep beating her? Why couldn't she give her family the new house her lover had built for her or any one of the other 4,000 acres of property?
Why was the hearsay testimony admitted into evidence at the rape trial? And the $64,000. question: after he gave her all the deeds to the property he had purchased, AND specifically recorded the deeds in her name at the courthouse, WHY are we supposed to believe that the child became the rightful legal owner of all that property simply by the handing over the deeds after the murder?? The property unfortunately would have gone to her creepy, fat, ugly, brutal, husband, who already owned half the county. This book was a Goodreads recommendation and since I had so enjoyed "A Reliable Wife", I expected a winner. My mistake.
Why would a man bring a 6-year old boy along on his trysts with his married lover and swear the child to secrecy? He didn't need to babysit. He didn't need the company. And why did the child's parents let him continue to accompany the man long after they suspected and then knew where he was going? And why, please tell me, when the child underwent a personality change and began acting out horribly did the parents not suspect that the burden of secrecy was a factor? And why would both man and boy take out their frustrations on the beloved dog?
Why would a woman, no matter how stupid, continue to live with a man who beat her brutally when she knew she was actually richer than he was, once she owned half the property in the county? And why would her lover continue to see her, knowing that it lead her husband to keep beating her? Why couldn't she give her family the new house her lover had built for her or any one of the other 4,000 acres of property?
Why was the hearsay testimony admitted into evidence at the rape trial? And the $64,000. question: after he gave her all the deeds to the property he had purchased, AND specifically recorded the deeds in her name at the courthouse, WHY are we supposed to believe that the child became the rightful legal owner of all that property simply by the handing over the deeds after the murder?? The property unfortunately would have gone to her creepy, fat, ugly, brutal, husband, who already owned half the county. This book was a Goodreads recommendation and since I had so enjoyed "A Reliable Wife", I expected a winner. My mistake.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
January 11, 2012
Wow. This is a very emotionally charged and heart capturing story.
A new guy in town, with money in a suitcase... it begins simple enough.
But this is the thing... it's an amazing STORY. And then there's the way it was WRITTEN.
So uniquely Robert Goolrick.
It amazes me how beautifully he uses words.
The intensity behind soft conversation. The understanding he has of people.
How he digs down to the truth of things through his storytelling.
Amazing.
There were scenes in this story so beautifully crafted that I wanted to memorize the words.
I wanted to carry the words with me - or share them with others.
There were pages that buried themselves in my heart because of the truth explored through reading them. The truth that "such things could happen".
So, yes - five stars. I guarantee it will do your heart good to read this - but I can't explain why - you just have to read the story. Beautiful, beautiful writing, and a hell of a storyworld.
A new guy in town, with money in a suitcase... it begins simple enough.
But this is the thing... it's an amazing STORY. And then there's the way it was WRITTEN.
So uniquely Robert Goolrick.
It amazes me how beautifully he uses words.
The intensity behind soft conversation. The understanding he has of people.
How he digs down to the truth of things through his storytelling.
Amazing.
There were scenes in this story so beautifully crafted that I wanted to memorize the words.
I wanted to carry the words with me - or share them with others.
There were pages that buried themselves in my heart because of the truth explored through reading them. The truth that "such things could happen".
So, yes - five stars. I guarantee it will do your heart good to read this - but I can't explain why - you just have to read the story. Beautiful, beautiful writing, and a hell of a storyworld.
July 3, 2012
A stranger (Charlie) comes into town (**spoiler alert**) with tons of unlimited cash (where did he get it? who knows?? Don't ask questions!), and proceeds to have an affair with a married woman (Sylvan). While having his trysts with her, he brings along a little boy, the son (Sam) of a friend of his (Will), and has Sam either 1. wait outside for him or 2. come inside Sylvan's house with him, but with strict instructions NOT to come upstairs to the bedroom. Long story short, Charlie is regarded as a hero, someone to be admired for this behavior. Sam ends up walking in on Charlie and Sylvan at one point in the story. Geez. Poor Sam is basically scarred for life, and perjures himself on the witness stand because Charlie made him swear he would never tell anyone about the affair. And throughout this mess, Charlie is made out to be some kind of hero and an honest, upstanding, respectable person. Whaaaaat?! Also, throughout the book, Goolrick really makes it clear that he wants you to know there is really no right and wrong, no heaven or hell, and probably no God, either. Why this book has received the rave reviews it has is a mystery to me. I wish I hadn't wasted my time finishing it. NOT recommended.
July 15, 2012
Well actually 3.5 stars...
I very much like the way in which Mr Goolrick both writes and structures his stories. There is always a bit of something that is a bit murky about his characters and oftentimes there runs a undercurrent that is barely perceptible in the story, but ultimately gets you in the end. So it was with Mr Goolrick's current novel.
This was a story of a young man, Charlie Beale, newly returned from World War 2, who wants to settle down in a small Virginia town. He is looking for a sense of belonging and peace which for a time he seems to find in this town. He is befriended by the town butcher, Will, who he ultimately works for, and his wife, Alma and young son, Sam. There developes a very special relationship between the young man and this young boy. They become almost inseparable as they bring a loving relationship forward of mutual love and trust. Into all of this however, there comes a very torrid love affair between Charlie and the wife of the town's richest man. Interwoven in the story are the townspeople heavily influenced by their religious pastors and yet, always seeming to be fighting a kind of mind game between the goodness of a person and the laws that are preached as god's by man.
The fault I found with in the pages was that as hard as I could, I did not understand the young woman who loved our protagonist. Her ideas always seemed alien to me and I felt her character was out of sorts with everyone including herself which perhaps was just as the author wanted me to feel. I also had some issues with how the young man would bring the young boy, Sam, with him as he went on his various trysts with Sylvan. I just could not wrap my arms around that concept.
This was a good read, one that left the reader with lots of questions about understanding the nature of people and haunting image of how within all people there is the hidden, the unknown, and the ability to seek revenge even when you love overwhelmingly.
I very much like the way in which Mr Goolrick both writes and structures his stories. There is always a bit of something that is a bit murky about his characters and oftentimes there runs a undercurrent that is barely perceptible in the story, but ultimately gets you in the end. So it was with Mr Goolrick's current novel.
This was a story of a young man, Charlie Beale, newly returned from World War 2, who wants to settle down in a small Virginia town. He is looking for a sense of belonging and peace which for a time he seems to find in this town. He is befriended by the town butcher, Will, who he ultimately works for, and his wife, Alma and young son, Sam. There developes a very special relationship between the young man and this young boy. They become almost inseparable as they bring a loving relationship forward of mutual love and trust. Into all of this however, there comes a very torrid love affair between Charlie and the wife of the town's richest man. Interwoven in the story are the townspeople heavily influenced by their religious pastors and yet, always seeming to be fighting a kind of mind game between the goodness of a person and the laws that are preached as god's by man.
The fault I found with in the pages was that as hard as I could, I did not understand the young woman who loved our protagonist. Her ideas always seemed alien to me and I felt her character was out of sorts with everyone including herself which perhaps was just as the author wanted me to feel. I also had some issues with how the young man would bring the young boy, Sam, with him as he went on his various trysts with Sylvan. I just could not wrap my arms around that concept.
This was a good read, one that left the reader with lots of questions about understanding the nature of people and haunting image of how within all people there is the hidden, the unknown, and the ability to seek revenge even when you love overwhelmingly.
January 27, 2018
Charlie Beale is a stud, a war veteran and a skilled baseball player. He works hard at his craft as a butcher and proves himself a conscientious friend. All the women in the small town of Brownsburg have a crush on Charlie and all the men respect him. But Charlie is looking for something more; he's Heading Out to Wonderful. And he finds wonderful in the form of Sylvan Glass.
Sylvan is beautiful, whip-smart and glamorous. She dreams of celebrity and has achieved a movie-star's appearance and mannerisms despite being born in the country. All the men in Brownsburg have the hots for Sylvan and all the women are jealous of her. It's only natural that when Charlie and Sylvan meet they fall instantly in love and it's only a matter of time before they achieve their destiny and screw.
Will the two hottest people in town find happiness together or will their affair be dashed by Sylvan's villainous husband Boaty? Boaty is hated by all and owns a laundry list of personal defects; he's gluttonous, greedy, boorish, cowardly and mean. But despite his faults he's amassed considerable wealth through some vaguely-worded business dealings; his story is almost inspirational.
Boaty bought Sylvan like a head of cattle and even though he despises her he'll never let her go. And he holds the deed to her family's farm; giving him leverage should she try to leave. I'm sure a more banal setup for a love story could be imagined, but it would take some effort. This tale of illicit romance takes a number of increasingly unlikely, dramatic turns with diminishing effect until the sensationalistic, shrug-worthy conclusion.
But while the plot is trite and unconvincing, Goolrick redeems himself with winsome prose and lovingly-crafted supporting characters. This could be the breeziest half-baked novel you read all year.
Edited 1-27-2018
Sylvan is beautiful, whip-smart and glamorous. She dreams of celebrity and has achieved a movie-star's appearance and mannerisms despite being born in the country. All the men in Brownsburg have the hots for Sylvan and all the women are jealous of her. It's only natural that when Charlie and Sylvan meet they fall instantly in love and it's only a matter of time before they achieve their destiny and screw.
Will the two hottest people in town find happiness together or will their affair be dashed by Sylvan's villainous husband Boaty? Boaty is hated by all and owns a laundry list of personal defects; he's gluttonous, greedy, boorish, cowardly and mean. But despite his faults he's amassed considerable wealth through some vaguely-worded business dealings; his story is almost inspirational.
Boaty bought Sylvan like a head of cattle and even though he despises her he'll never let her go. And he holds the deed to her family's farm; giving him leverage should she try to leave. I'm sure a more banal setup for a love story could be imagined, but it would take some effort. This tale of illicit romance takes a number of increasingly unlikely, dramatic turns with diminishing effect until the sensationalistic, shrug-worthy conclusion.
But while the plot is trite and unconvincing, Goolrick redeems himself with winsome prose and lovingly-crafted supporting characters. This could be the breeziest half-baked novel you read all year.
Edited 1-27-2018
Read
July 7, 2012I need a split scoring system to rate this book. Four stars for the first three quarters of the book, one star for the ending. (Spoiler alert!) I loved the tense, doomed passion and the mysterious development of Charlie, but hated when the doomed ending in all its ugliness and improbability finally arrived. It felt cheap and cursory. Even the whole brother/coffin building scene -- he hauled that box into and out of a truck bed by himself? I know, I know, so much of many stories, and this one in particular, has to be taken with some measure of forgiving the improbable, but each reader has her own limit that, when reached, turns the story toward the unforgivable. I had high hopes because I loved A Reliable Wife and I think Charlie will live on in my memory, but the book as a whole did not win me over.
Also, readers help me out here, I didn't understand the significance of the italicized sections.
Also, readers help me out here, I didn't understand the significance of the italicized sections.
July 26, 2018
Did not expect that ending.
March 22, 2013
I don't remember the last time my attitude about a book has so radically shifted in the midst of the story as it did with this one. If I could rate only the first half of the book, I'd give it five stars. Goolrick artfully describes life in small town Virginia and the relationships of its inhabitants. It's really a love story between the whole town and a stranger who decides to adopt it - Charlie Beale. All this is seen through the eyes of five year old Sam, the son of Charlie's new boss. Sam and Charlie oddly but believably become best friends.
I really fell in love with that first half of the book. I wish the story could have just started and ended there.
Because then the story takes a dark turn, with the last part of the book SO dark that I actually felt betrayed. There was a point I wanted to throw the book out a window. Maybe that was the author's intent. Everyone lies and cheats for reasons so convoluted and wrong they they seem false to me. Even young Sam, who . But worst and most wrong of all was the author's choice to have
Granted, we don't know where Charlie comes from, rolling into town with that briefcase full of money. But that seemed to go against everything Charlie's character had been about until that point -
I hoped for a brighter outcome and felt completely robbed when I didn't get one.
I really fell in love with that first half of the book. I wish the story could have just started and ended there.
Because then the story takes a dark turn, with the last part of the book SO dark that I actually felt betrayed. There was a point I wanted to throw the book out a window. Maybe that was the author's intent. Everyone lies and cheats for reasons so convoluted and wrong they they seem false to me. Even young Sam, who . But worst and most wrong of all was the author's choice to have
Granted, we don't know where Charlie comes from, rolling into town with that briefcase full of money. But that seemed to go against everything Charlie's character had been about until that point -
I hoped for a brighter outcome and felt completely robbed when I didn't get one.
June 17, 2024
Charlie Beale comes into Brownsburg, VA with a love for the outdoors and a special skill of butchering. He slowly befriends the community and begins to endear himself to the people. He slowly makes friends and begins work, and still sleeps best outside listening to the stream of the river.
He manages to fall head over heels in love with a married woman, and his world is turned upside down. I had the sinking feeling in my gut that Charlie was better than this and I sincerely hoped he woke up and didn't succumb to these feelings. I found myself almost shouting at Charlie "Don't do it!" It will only end badly, but how badly - even I could not predict.
The people in this community were frustrating, putting so much faith into their religion, choosing to all be sheep and go along with what their churches and everyone else told them. This infuriated me, it should matter how this guy acted and what he did, not what the church elders thought. I was surprised by the turns the author took and enjoyed this a little bit more in the second half considering.
He manages to fall head over heels in love with a married woman, and his world is turned upside down. I had the sinking feeling in my gut that Charlie was better than this and I sincerely hoped he woke up and didn't succumb to these feelings. I found myself almost shouting at Charlie "Don't do it!" It will only end badly, but how badly - even I could not predict.
The people in this community were frustrating, putting so much faith into their religion, choosing to all be sheep and go along with what their churches and everyone else told them. This infuriated me, it should matter how this guy acted and what he did, not what the church elders thought. I was surprised by the turns the author took and enjoyed this a little bit more in the second half considering.
February 21, 2013
HEADING OUT TO WONDERFUL
Robert Goolrick
HEADING OUT TO WONDERFUL is a haunting mountain folk ballad where stories and storytelling echo far and wide in mountains and homes. Some of these tales become poems and some become songs.
This is a tragic and passionate tale of a love affair that is all consuming yet completely forbidden. This finely crafted novel takes place in the summer of 1948 in a sleepy village nestled in a valley in Virginia.
Handsome, charismatic stranger Charlie Beale wanders into the town of Brownsburg with all his possessions in two suitcases. One suitcase is full of a lot of money (never explained) and the other contains his fine set of butcher knives. The local butcher and his family befriend him and end up treating him like family, especially the young son, Sam. Sam becomes a constant companion and is eventually thrown into situations way beyond his years that have a gigantic impact on the boy and his life. Charlie meets the wealthiest citizen and his beautiful teen age bride, Sylvan, and is completely enchanted and mesmerized by her. Sylvan becomes his all consuming passion that threatens to destroy anyone and everything in its path.
HEADING OUT TO WONDERFUL is narrated by Sam, now an old man looking back on the events that changed his world forever. The book is a suspenseful, heart stopping novel of obsession and love gone terribly wrong.
Robert Goolrick
HEADING OUT TO WONDERFUL is a haunting mountain folk ballad where stories and storytelling echo far and wide in mountains and homes. Some of these tales become poems and some become songs.
This is a tragic and passionate tale of a love affair that is all consuming yet completely forbidden. This finely crafted novel takes place in the summer of 1948 in a sleepy village nestled in a valley in Virginia.
Handsome, charismatic stranger Charlie Beale wanders into the town of Brownsburg with all his possessions in two suitcases. One suitcase is full of a lot of money (never explained) and the other contains his fine set of butcher knives. The local butcher and his family befriend him and end up treating him like family, especially the young son, Sam. Sam becomes a constant companion and is eventually thrown into situations way beyond his years that have a gigantic impact on the boy and his life. Charlie meets the wealthiest citizen and his beautiful teen age bride, Sylvan, and is completely enchanted and mesmerized by her. Sylvan becomes his all consuming passion that threatens to destroy anyone and everything in its path.
HEADING OUT TO WONDERFUL is narrated by Sam, now an old man looking back on the events that changed his world forever. The book is a suspenseful, heart stopping novel of obsession and love gone terribly wrong.
August 30, 2019
Sadly, while heading out to wonderful, there was a detour down the road to perdition. An intense, dark, and completely engaging story that you know, from the very beginning, is not going to turn out well. Very well written, I couldn’t turn the pages fast enough. The story centers around what appears to be a basically good man who falls hopelessly in love with probably a basically good woman, who is married but only in the sense that she’s another man’s property, and who is young and impressionable with her head in the clouds, who sees him as nothing more than an actor in the movie of her life, and by the time she realizes the good thing she has, made of real flesh and bone, its at the point of no return. I was horrified by the reaction of the townspeople to this couple as their story crumbled, and their actions in the end, perhaps meant to be redemptive, fell way short. For me, reminiscent of Gillian Flynn, and a very satisfying read. Looking forward to reading more by this author.
June 18, 2012
I loved Robert Goolrick's book, A Reliable Wife, and his new one is even better. Heading Out to Wonderful has just about everything you could want in a book: love, redemption, betrayal, atmosphere, good characterization, and wonderful writing.
The novel takes place in Brownsburg, Virginia in 1948, just after World War II. The whites live on one side of town and the blacks on the other side. This is a 'moral' town where no crime, to anyone's knowledge, has ever been committed. It is quiet and beautiful, located in those beautiful unpopulated hills that Virginia once had.
The story centers around one Charlie Beale. He is a newcomer to this small town in Virginia. All he brings with him is a suitcase of knives and another suitcase filled with money. He asks the local butcher if he can work for him for free for one month to show him his skills and then the butcher can decide if he's worth a salary. During this month a lot happens.
Charlie befriends Sam, the butcher's five year-old son and they do a lot together, not always what Sam's parents think they are doing, however. Sam is a child born to his parents late in life. Alma is 40 years old and Will is 54. Sam craves Charlie's youth and all it can offer - the strength, the fastness, the ability to play with children in a way his father can not.
When Will was growing up he was best friends with Boaty Glass, now the richest man in town, but since childhood Boaty has turned mean and sadistic, no one Will would want as a friend. For 48 years, Boaty took care of his mother and then when his mother died he went out looking for a wife. He found her in a holler, somewhere laid back in a place where no one goes unless you're born to it. He buys seventeen year-old Sylvan from her parents. Even at seventeen, Sylvan is a bit old in Boaty's eyes. The deal is this: her parents get the lease on their house and they own it as long as Sylvan doesn't leave him.
The story gets very, very interesting as people form friendships, develop love for those who are not theirs, and alliances are formed. This is a truly wonderful book and I was mesmerized by its writing, something close to magical realism but in a style that is a bit repetitive so as to get the point across. I recommend this book to anyone who likes to read. Give yourself a gift today and get yourself this book.
Comment
The novel takes place in Brownsburg, Virginia in 1948, just after World War II. The whites live on one side of town and the blacks on the other side. This is a 'moral' town where no crime, to anyone's knowledge, has ever been committed. It is quiet and beautiful, located in those beautiful unpopulated hills that Virginia once had.
The story centers around one Charlie Beale. He is a newcomer to this small town in Virginia. All he brings with him is a suitcase of knives and another suitcase filled with money. He asks the local butcher if he can work for him for free for one month to show him his skills and then the butcher can decide if he's worth a salary. During this month a lot happens.
Charlie befriends Sam, the butcher's five year-old son and they do a lot together, not always what Sam's parents think they are doing, however. Sam is a child born to his parents late in life. Alma is 40 years old and Will is 54. Sam craves Charlie's youth and all it can offer - the strength, the fastness, the ability to play with children in a way his father can not.
When Will was growing up he was best friends with Boaty Glass, now the richest man in town, but since childhood Boaty has turned mean and sadistic, no one Will would want as a friend. For 48 years, Boaty took care of his mother and then when his mother died he went out looking for a wife. He found her in a holler, somewhere laid back in a place where no one goes unless you're born to it. He buys seventeen year-old Sylvan from her parents. Even at seventeen, Sylvan is a bit old in Boaty's eyes. The deal is this: her parents get the lease on their house and they own it as long as Sylvan doesn't leave him.
The story gets very, very interesting as people form friendships, develop love for those who are not theirs, and alliances are formed. This is a truly wonderful book and I was mesmerized by its writing, something close to magical realism but in a style that is a bit repetitive so as to get the point across. I recommend this book to anyone who likes to read. Give yourself a gift today and get yourself this book.
Comment
June 29, 2012
Very sad, tragic, depressing tale. Had hopes early on that this would be somewhat like A Reliable Wife (RG’s 2009 bk) which was a gripping tale of love, lust, betrayal and suspense with loads of twists and turns. Heading Out to Wonderful starts out with a feeling of hope for the new stranger to town, Charlie Beele, Boaty’s bought and paid for young backwoods bride Sylvan, little Sam, and even Clairie the town’s seamstress. The time is 1940’s and a small town Virginia people’s feelings can turn on a dime (prejudice, wishy-wash and hypocritical). Sad, tragic, depressing tale of friendship, longing, obsession, lust, love and loss for so many of the bks characters. Poor little Sam who narrates this tale some 60 years later surely grew up with a severe need for psychological counseling. Wanted to cry afterwards it was so depressing. Also I found the writing was often confusing to read with paragraphs sometimes heading off in an overly wordy, heady direction. Then there were those paragraphs written about characters having feelings of like and or love and in the same paragraph flip the switch turn to anger/hate. Had to re-read those more than once and more often than not, left without an understanding of the author’s intention. Definitely a downer, wished I’d have passed on this one.
June 12, 2012
Think of how hard it is to reconstruct memories with only the written word: to convey mood and atmosphere; to paint, using only sentences strung together, the color and emotion and sheer force of human passions; to make a landscape come so alive that we can feel the frisson of cold water in a lake or the cruel avoidance of neighbors’ acknowledgments in the street; to enable us to feel lust and taste blood and understand what it is to do the unthinkable. This is precisely what Goolrick can do, like almost no one else.
This is a story with so many layers, that each time you think you know what it is about, another motif occurs to you. In that way – in its paradoxical combination of complexity and precision - it seems acutely real, making it both haunting and unforgettable.
Charlie Beale, age 39, comes to Brownsburg, Virginia in 1948 and decides he wants to settle there. He has searched around a lot; he is homesick for a place he has never been. Brownsburg is an insular community but Charlie loves the land and feels right there. He is a butcher by trade, and manages to convince the town’s one butcher, Will Haislett, that he would make a good assistant. Will’s whole family takes him in – his wife Alma helps Charlie get settled, and their five-year old son Sam, who inexplicably refers to Charlie as “Beebo” gets attached to Charlie like a second father. And Sam becomes for Charlie his fantasy son.
Charlie is working on his moral compass: he is striving for goodness, and he is looking for “something wonderful” in his life. Alma tells him people find the thing they expect to find, but it doesn’t work that way for Charlie. Alma insists he to go to church to be accepted in the town, but the white preachers are fixated on shame and sin and hell. He is informed it is unacceptable to go to the small black church, even though he finds solace there in the joyfulness of the service. Thus, he cannot find a path to happiness in the white churches. He is prevented from finding it in the black church. And finally he gets undone by the only option he finds open to him: the worship of Sylvan Glass, the beautiful young wife of the local richest man in town.
Sylvan was literally purchased as a bride by the much-older and mean-spirited Harrison “Boaty” Glass, who “had wanted a glorious hood ornament for the car of his life.” Sylvan, from a hardscrabble family, had Hollywood dreams that transported her loveliness to what she thought was its rightful place. Whether she lived with Boaty or not didn’t interfere with her imagination.
When she and Charlie saw each other, however, there was an instant attraction. Charlie looked like a movie star to her, and to him, Sylvan looked like an angel; in her he saw the answer to his search for redemption. But when Charlie went from the realm of fantasy to reality for Sylvan, the flesh and blood of his need was too unlike the celluloid visions that so mesmerized her. So she made a choice. … a choice that changed everything and everyone who paid the price for her immersion in illusions.
Discussion: It is interesting to me that this author arouses such vehement reactions. Whether it is with profound admiration or intense dislike, readers respond to his exposure of raw emotions and secret passions, and to his expression of the perhaps unwelcome message that desire and sex and love and want and need are not always romantic and pretty, but sometimes just another form of violence. In this book, he ups the stakes yet again, and adds religion to the forces of evil that can bring men down, turning Christian salvation into a death sentence.
There is a certain distance with which the author keeps us from the characters, and I think that is necessary. Even with the walls he erects, the pain we see acted out is so red and tender that any closer could hardly be borne. As it is, he abrades the cocoon of our consciousness that protects us from the depth and breadth of the things that scare us. But they are the very same things that make us the most human. We are not gods; we are human beings, and there are few writers living today who can show that vulnerability like this author. Certainly, there are moments of “wonderful,” but through Goolrick we also gain an intimate familiarity with darkness; too intimate for some, but brilliantly done, nevertheless.
Evaluation: The author has said that this book is based on a story a friend told him thirty years ago; that it is, in its essential elements, a true story. But what Goolrick does is take this anecdote of a true event and turn it into universal truths about the human condition. It is a spellbinding story, and a spellbinding book.
Rating: 4.5/5
This is a story with so many layers, that each time you think you know what it is about, another motif occurs to you. In that way – in its paradoxical combination of complexity and precision - it seems acutely real, making it both haunting and unforgettable.
Charlie Beale, age 39, comes to Brownsburg, Virginia in 1948 and decides he wants to settle there. He has searched around a lot; he is homesick for a place he has never been. Brownsburg is an insular community but Charlie loves the land and feels right there. He is a butcher by trade, and manages to convince the town’s one butcher, Will Haislett, that he would make a good assistant. Will’s whole family takes him in – his wife Alma helps Charlie get settled, and their five-year old son Sam, who inexplicably refers to Charlie as “Beebo” gets attached to Charlie like a second father. And Sam becomes for Charlie his fantasy son.
Charlie is working on his moral compass: he is striving for goodness, and he is looking for “something wonderful” in his life. Alma tells him people find the thing they expect to find, but it doesn’t work that way for Charlie. Alma insists he to go to church to be accepted in the town, but the white preachers are fixated on shame and sin and hell. He is informed it is unacceptable to go to the small black church, even though he finds solace there in the joyfulness of the service. Thus, he cannot find a path to happiness in the white churches. He is prevented from finding it in the black church. And finally he gets undone by the only option he finds open to him: the worship of Sylvan Glass, the beautiful young wife of the local richest man in town.
Sylvan was literally purchased as a bride by the much-older and mean-spirited Harrison “Boaty” Glass, who “had wanted a glorious hood ornament for the car of his life.” Sylvan, from a hardscrabble family, had Hollywood dreams that transported her loveliness to what she thought was its rightful place. Whether she lived with Boaty or not didn’t interfere with her imagination.
When she and Charlie saw each other, however, there was an instant attraction. Charlie looked like a movie star to her, and to him, Sylvan looked like an angel; in her he saw the answer to his search for redemption. But when Charlie went from the realm of fantasy to reality for Sylvan, the flesh and blood of his need was too unlike the celluloid visions that so mesmerized her. So she made a choice. … a choice that changed everything and everyone who paid the price for her immersion in illusions.
Discussion: It is interesting to me that this author arouses such vehement reactions. Whether it is with profound admiration or intense dislike, readers respond to his exposure of raw emotions and secret passions, and to his expression of the perhaps unwelcome message that desire and sex and love and want and need are not always romantic and pretty, but sometimes just another form of violence. In this book, he ups the stakes yet again, and adds religion to the forces of evil that can bring men down, turning Christian salvation into a death sentence.
There is a certain distance with which the author keeps us from the characters, and I think that is necessary. Even with the walls he erects, the pain we see acted out is so red and tender that any closer could hardly be borne. As it is, he abrades the cocoon of our consciousness that protects us from the depth and breadth of the things that scare us. But they are the very same things that make us the most human. We are not gods; we are human beings, and there are few writers living today who can show that vulnerability like this author. Certainly, there are moments of “wonderful,” but through Goolrick we also gain an intimate familiarity with darkness; too intimate for some, but brilliantly done, nevertheless.
Evaluation: The author has said that this book is based on a story a friend told him thirty years ago; that it is, in its essential elements, a true story. But what Goolrick does is take this anecdote of a true event and turn it into universal truths about the human condition. It is a spellbinding story, and a spellbinding book.
Rating: 4.5/5
January 6, 2014
Charlie Beale arrives in Brownsburg, Virginia with two suitcases. One full of money, the other packed with the sharpest knives anyone has ever seen. Brownsburg is quintessential small town America, and in 1948, the people of Brownsburg are content with their small town ways. They are curious about Charlie, maybe even a little suspicious, but in his quiet manner, he charms them all. Especially a five-year-old boy named Sam, who grows to idolize Charlie. Charlie himself seems charmed with the town and his new, simple life until he meets twenty-year-old Sylvan Glass, the trophy wife of the richest, meanest bastard in town. Charlie and Sylvan are immediately drawn to one another, and little Sam witnesses it all.
"The thing is, all memory is fiction. You have to remember that. Of course, there are things that actually, certifiably happened, things where you can pinpoint the day, the hour, and the minute. When you think about it though, those things mostly seem to happen to other people."
I finished this book several days ago, and I'm still thinking about it. Usually I have a pretty good idea of how I feel about a book while I'm reading it, but this is one of those weird ones that has me all twisted up. The author is fairly heavy-handed with the foreshadowing, and like Chekhov's gun, as soon as those sharp, sharp knives are mentioned, you know the story is not going to end well. And it doesn't. While I wasn't surprised by the climax, I was disturbed and deeply unsatisfied by it. Not that I'm scared of a little literary violence, but it didn't feel true to Charlie's character. At least not the character we were introduced to...but then again, is that the point? How little we truly know another person....The story is narrated by Sam as an old man looking back on the events of that year, and the choice of perspective was an odd one I thought, until I discovered that the story is based on real events as told to the author by an acquaintance. While that doesn't really change my feelings about the book, it does answer a few questions with regards to why the author told the story the way he did. This is not a light-hearted read, and I can't say that I liked this book, but I think it will be excellent for bookclub discussion.
"The thing is, all memory is fiction. You have to remember that. Of course, there are things that actually, certifiably happened, things where you can pinpoint the day, the hour, and the minute. When you think about it though, those things mostly seem to happen to other people."
I finished this book several days ago, and I'm still thinking about it. Usually I have a pretty good idea of how I feel about a book while I'm reading it, but this is one of those weird ones that has me all twisted up. The author is fairly heavy-handed with the foreshadowing, and like Chekhov's gun, as soon as those sharp, sharp knives are mentioned, you know the story is not going to end well. And it doesn't. While I wasn't surprised by the climax, I was disturbed and deeply unsatisfied by it. Not that I'm scared of a little literary violence, but it didn't feel true to Charlie's character. At least not the character we were introduced to...but then again, is that the point? How little we truly know another person....The story is narrated by Sam as an old man looking back on the events of that year, and the choice of perspective was an odd one I thought, until I discovered that the story is based on real events as told to the author by an acquaintance. While that doesn't really change my feelings about the book, it does answer a few questions with regards to why the author told the story the way he did. This is not a light-hearted read, and I can't say that I liked this book, but I think it will be excellent for bookclub discussion.
July 18, 2012
Robert Goolrick's new book, Heading Out to Wonderful is a terrific follow-up to his creepy, captivating A Reliable Wife. It's 1948, and 39-year-old veteran Charlie Beale arrives in idyllic Brownsburg, Virginia, with two suitcases—one stuffed with cash and the other containing a set of high-quality butcher knives. Brownsburg is a small town where everyone knows everyone, where white and black people don't interact much but treat each other with reasonable respect. After a few weeks of making people wonder just what his intentions are, Charlie gets a job working for local butcher Will Haislett, and quickly becomes a part of Will's family. No one is as enamored of Charlie as Will's five-year-old son, Sam, who worships him with an almost heroic devotion.
Charlie quickly becomes a beloved fixture in Brownsburg. And then he meets young Sylvan Glass, the wife of the town's richest man, Harrison "Boaty" Glass. Boaty literally purchased Sylvan and moved her from her small, hillbilly town to Brownsburg, where she has modeled herself after the women she sees in her beloved movies. When Sylvan and Charlie connect, their passion is both envied and condemned by their fellow townspeople—but it has consequences that threaten to destroy everyone. And the person most caught in the crossfire is young Sam.
This is lyrical, beautifully written book. While you may see much of the plot developments coming, Goolrick unwinds them in a suspenseful way, and you are completely drawn into the town and its citizens. The characters are complex, especially Sam, and you find yourself aching to protect him from all of what is happening around him. Periodically, Goolrick spends a little too much time describing a feeling or an incident, but that doesn't really detract from your desire to know how the story will unfold. The book is haunting, like the old country songs that Charlie listens to in the book, and you'll find yourself thinking about the story and the characters long after you've finished.
Charlie quickly becomes a beloved fixture in Brownsburg. And then he meets young Sylvan Glass, the wife of the town's richest man, Harrison "Boaty" Glass. Boaty literally purchased Sylvan and moved her from her small, hillbilly town to Brownsburg, where she has modeled herself after the women she sees in her beloved movies. When Sylvan and Charlie connect, their passion is both envied and condemned by their fellow townspeople—but it has consequences that threaten to destroy everyone. And the person most caught in the crossfire is young Sam.
This is lyrical, beautifully written book. While you may see much of the plot developments coming, Goolrick unwinds them in a suspenseful way, and you are completely drawn into the town and its citizens. The characters are complex, especially Sam, and you find yourself aching to protect him from all of what is happening around him. Periodically, Goolrick spends a little too much time describing a feeling or an incident, but that doesn't really detract from your desire to know how the story will unfold. The book is haunting, like the old country songs that Charlie listens to in the book, and you'll find yourself thinking about the story and the characters long after you've finished.
November 17, 2017
The stories told by Robert Goolrich are not among the easiest to listen to. This is an epic tale that seems to have Biblical and Shakesperian overtones: a modern morality tale of love and hate,
sin, retribution, destiny, forgiveness, acceptance, reality vs. wishes. The seeds have been planted slowly and carefully throughout the story that will lead to the ultimate tragedy of the ending. And yet the ending took my breath away. He is an author to be reckoned with....Goolrick tells the dark tales of ordinary folk, whose lives seem to be unassuming and uneventful until they make that one decision that will change them and others forever. I imagine his books will be too disturbing and emotional for some readers.
sin, retribution, destiny, forgiveness, acceptance, reality vs. wishes. The seeds have been planted slowly and carefully throughout the story that will lead to the ultimate tragedy of the ending. And yet the ending took my breath away. He is an author to be reckoned with....Goolrick tells the dark tales of ordinary folk, whose lives seem to be unassuming and uneventful until they make that one decision that will change them and others forever. I imagine his books will be too disturbing and emotional for some readers.
September 20, 2012
When I was a teen I wrote dark and cryptic stories because I thought I was terribly DEEP and artistic. Thank god none survive to this day. Mr. Goolrick has managed to get one of his half-assed teen stories spun into a novel, and published. Dude. I wish I could have figured that out, there seems to be money in it. Anyway, there are holes - where did the money come from? How did the final property transfer possibly happen? And the final question, WTF?
This is a talented writer who is selling us a bill of goods. Don't fall for it.
This is a talented writer who is selling us a bill of goods. Don't fall for it.
July 26, 2012
I’m struggling to figure out just what I want to say about Heading Out To Wonderful. The writing is lovely, and I became involved enough in the plot that I stayed up way past my bedtime to finish the book. On the other hand, I’m not sure that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
Heading Out To Wonderful is set in the sleepy rural town of Brownsburg, Virginia in 1948, post-war years when life in America was on the cusp of change. The author lovingly describes the quality of life in Brownsburg:
And also:
Into this small town arrives Charlie Beale, an attractive and pleasant man who appears in his truck one day, bringing nothing but two suitcases, one filled with butcher knives and one filled with cash. Charlie seeks out work with the local butcher, buys a plot of land out by the river, and settles in.
Charlie remains something of an enigma throughout the book. He is 39 years old, athletic and graceful, skilled with his hands and his knives. He served in Europe in the war, but doing what exactly, we never find out. The only clue we get about his wartime experiences is that his butcher knives are German; we can only speculate as to where or how he acquired them.
Charlie doesn’t speak about his childhood or background except in vague generalities. Where did all that cash come from? We don’t know. Charlie is full of yearning, for a place, for land, for connections, and for goodness. Somehow along the way, Charlie lost his sense of hope, and so he set out traveling, looking for “something wonderful”. His new friend and employer Will tries to reset Charlie’s expectations:
Charlie seems to have found “all right” in Brownsburg. He earns the friendship of the townspeople, and is the adored companion of Will’s young son Sam. Charlie might even have been content at last, until he meets Sylvan Glass, a 17-year-old “hillbilly” girl, bought and paid for by the richest man in town, now a trophy wife who dreams of glamour and Hollywood. What follows is a year-long affair which consumes Charlie and disrupts the lives of everyone in town. Reading about Charlie and Sylvan, we know that something disastrous has been set in motion; I could only wait to see what shape the disaster would ultimately take.
A sense of foreboding hangs over the story from the outset. It’s clear that nothing good can come out of the affair. By the time I reached the half-way mark in the book, it became very difficult to put down, and I had to keep reading to see which way it would go. To avoid spoilers, I won’t say anything about the book’s climax, other than to say that events unfold that are at the same time tragic yet not unexpected.
At the conclusion, I was disturbed by the lack of overall coherence. Many plot elements that are compelling are introduced, but I didn’t see the follow-through. The black and white communities live completely separate lives in Brownsburg. Both Charlie and Sylvan develop relationships that reach out across the color lines, yet I didn’t feel that this part of the story particularly went anywhere. Concepts of sin and salvation are introduced as Charlie struggles to fit into the spiritual life of the community, but again, I didn’t feel the points were carried through as the plot unfolded.
Ultimately, dramatic as the story is, Heading Out To Wonderful left me a bit puzzled at the end, wondering about the point of it all. Robert Goolrick is a terrific and thoughtful writer – I loved his previous novel, A Reliable Wife, with its dark secrets and twisty-turny plot developments. Unfortunately, despite the lovely prose, Heading Out To Wonderful doesn’t quite deliver.
Heading Out To Wonderful is set in the sleepy rural town of Brownsburg, Virginia in 1948, post-war years when life in America was on the cusp of change. The author lovingly describes the quality of life in Brownsburg:
Brownsburg, Virginia, 1948, the kind of town that existed in the years right after the war, where the terrible American wanting hadn’t touched yet, where most people lived a simple life without yearning for things they couldn’t have…
And also:
A particular town, then, Brownsburg, in a particular time and place. The notion of being happy didn’t occur to most people, it just wasn’t something they thought about, and life treated them pretty well… the notion of being unhappy didn’t occur much either.
Into this small town arrives Charlie Beale, an attractive and pleasant man who appears in his truck one day, bringing nothing but two suitcases, one filled with butcher knives and one filled with cash. Charlie seeks out work with the local butcher, buys a plot of land out by the river, and settles in.
Charlie remains something of an enigma throughout the book. He is 39 years old, athletic and graceful, skilled with his hands and his knives. He served in Europe in the war, but doing what exactly, we never find out. The only clue we get about his wartime experiences is that his butcher knives are German; we can only speculate as to where or how he acquired them.
Charlie doesn’t speak about his childhood or background except in vague generalities. Where did all that cash come from? We don’t know. Charlie is full of yearning, for a place, for land, for connections, and for goodness. Somehow along the way, Charlie lost his sense of hope, and so he set out traveling, looking for “something wonderful”. His new friend and employer Will tries to reset Charlie’s expectations:
Let me tell you something, son. When you’re young, and you head out to wonderful, everything is fresh and bright as a brand-new penny, but before you get to wonderful you’re going to have to pass through all right. And when you get to all right, stop and take a good, long look, because that may be as far as you’re ever going to go. Brownsburg ain’t heaven, by any means. But it’s perfectly fine. It’s all right.
Charlie seems to have found “all right” in Brownsburg. He earns the friendship of the townspeople, and is the adored companion of Will’s young son Sam. Charlie might even have been content at last, until he meets Sylvan Glass, a 17-year-old “hillbilly” girl, bought and paid for by the richest man in town, now a trophy wife who dreams of glamour and Hollywood. What follows is a year-long affair which consumes Charlie and disrupts the lives of everyone in town. Reading about Charlie and Sylvan, we know that something disastrous has been set in motion; I could only wait to see what shape the disaster would ultimately take.
A sense of foreboding hangs over the story from the outset. It’s clear that nothing good can come out of the affair. By the time I reached the half-way mark in the book, it became very difficult to put down, and I had to keep reading to see which way it would go. To avoid spoilers, I won’t say anything about the book’s climax, other than to say that events unfold that are at the same time tragic yet not unexpected.
At the conclusion, I was disturbed by the lack of overall coherence. Many plot elements that are compelling are introduced, but I didn’t see the follow-through. The black and white communities live completely separate lives in Brownsburg. Both Charlie and Sylvan develop relationships that reach out across the color lines, yet I didn’t feel that this part of the story particularly went anywhere. Concepts of sin and salvation are introduced as Charlie struggles to fit into the spiritual life of the community, but again, I didn’t feel the points were carried through as the plot unfolded.
Ultimately, dramatic as the story is, Heading Out To Wonderful left me a bit puzzled at the end, wondering about the point of it all. Robert Goolrick is a terrific and thoughtful writer – I loved his previous novel, A Reliable Wife, with its dark secrets and twisty-turny plot developments. Unfortunately, despite the lovely prose, Heading Out To Wonderful doesn’t quite deliver.
March 20, 2013
Wow, Goolrick did it to me again. This reading experience was much like when I read A Reliable Wife. At first I felt the story was very drawn out and scenes were exceptionally wordy – yet at the end I look at the story as a whole and just say “Wow”. Somehow through all the negative (and man there’s A LOT) and the drawn out pages a beautiful story was told. I expect to think one thing about the book and am left feeling something completely different by the end.
That said; this story was terribly disturbing and more than once I found it near impossible to continue. Charlie was seemingly a very nice guy; but he hid a disturbed and broken soul. I did not understand his obsession with Sylvan at all. I know the author made it a point to make sure the reader knew just how much he loved her; but I could never figure out WHY. And it was obvious she did not feel the same about him; I wished he’d seen who she truly was.
The use of 5 year old Sam throughout this entire book was by far the most difficult part of this story. I wanted to cry out and scream many times. How could his parents continue to let this little boy be subjected to Charlie and Sylvan’s ridiculously selfish and dangerous behavior? How on Earth does Charlie think that everything he put that boy through and everything he put on that boys shoulders is okay? I don’t understand why out of everything that happened in this book; this child had to be the primary victim – the story could have gone on just as well without that unnecessary cruelty.
Many things shocked me in this book and left me feeling hollow and uncertain. No doubt there are still people and situations like this in our world now. I just don’t know how to feel about this story, even now. It’s dark and heart breaking yet beautiful at the same time. Not the infidelity, or the abuse of Sam, or the shocking ending – but the overall story, how life can get so turned around and how two peoples actions changes the lives of others around them forever (whether good or bad) – it’s a beautifully written story. It definitely left a lasting impression on me, and likely will hurt my heart for a long time. But that’s what stories are meant to do. They’re meant to affect us and leave a lasting impression – no one said that impression had to be happy.
That said; this story was terribly disturbing and more than once I found it near impossible to continue. Charlie was seemingly a very nice guy; but he hid a disturbed and broken soul. I did not understand his obsession with Sylvan at all. I know the author made it a point to make sure the reader knew just how much he loved her; but I could never figure out WHY. And it was obvious she did not feel the same about him; I wished he’d seen who she truly was.
The use of 5 year old Sam throughout this entire book was by far the most difficult part of this story. I wanted to cry out and scream many times. How could his parents continue to let this little boy be subjected to Charlie and Sylvan’s ridiculously selfish and dangerous behavior? How on Earth does Charlie think that everything he put that boy through and everything he put on that boys shoulders is okay? I don’t understand why out of everything that happened in this book; this child had to be the primary victim – the story could have gone on just as well without that unnecessary cruelty.
Many things shocked me in this book and left me feeling hollow and uncertain. No doubt there are still people and situations like this in our world now. I just don’t know how to feel about this story, even now. It’s dark and heart breaking yet beautiful at the same time. Not the infidelity, or the abuse of Sam, or the shocking ending – but the overall story, how life can get so turned around and how two peoples actions changes the lives of others around them forever (whether good or bad) – it’s a beautifully written story. It definitely left a lasting impression on me, and likely will hurt my heart for a long time. But that’s what stories are meant to do. They’re meant to affect us and leave a lasting impression – no one said that impression had to be happy.
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