Eine gute Ehefrau

by Stewart O'Nan

Eine junge schwangere Frau wird nachts vom Anruf ihres Ehemannes geweckt: Tommy hat mit seinem Freund einen Einbruch begangen – dabei ist eine alte Frau ums Leben gekommen. Er muss ins Gefängnis. Pattys altes Leben endet in dieser Minute, ein neues beginnt: Sie zieht ihren Sohn Casey alleine auf und steht loyal zu ihrem Mann. Die ganzen 28 Jahre lang.

"Es gibt Romane von solcher Intensität, dass man sich ihnen nicht entziehen kann." (The New York Times)

"‹Eine gute Ehefrau› ist der poetischste und nachdenklichste Roman der letzten Jahre." (San Francisco Chronicle)

Genres: Fiction, Book Club, Contemporary, Literary Fiction, Adult Fiction, Crime, Audiobook

388 pages, Kindle Edition

First published March 23, 2005

About the author

Stewart O'Nan is the author of eighteen novels, including Emily, Alone; Last Night at the Lobster; A Prayer for the Dying; Snow Angels; and the forthcoming Ocean State, due out from Grove/Atlantic on March 8th, 2022.

With Stephen King, I’ve also co-written Faithful, a nonfiction account of the 2004 Boston Red Sox, and the e-story “A Face in the Crowd.”

You can catch me at stewart-onan.com, on Twitter @stewartonan and on Facebook @stewartONanAuthor

Reviews

[Darlene · Rating 4 out of 5]

This novel, The Good Wife by Stewart O'Nan takes place in the mid-1970s in a small town in southern New York state. The story begins with almost cinematic bursts of drama. Two scenes are playing out simultaneously; one scene involves Patty Dickerson, a twenty-seven-year-old woman who is expecting the birth of her first child. It's late at night and Patty is preparing for bed after a long and tiring day and she is anticipating the arrival home of her husband Tommy. This scene is so beautifully written that I can see it clearly in my mind... it is almost like a split screen. On one half of the screen we are watching Patty's bedtime rituals but on the other side of the screen, a crime-gone-terribly wrong is occurring. Tommy Dickerson, along with a friend (Gary) have decided to break into the home of an elderly woman to steal a pair of shot guns. The pair mistakenly believes the old woman was not at home and in the ensuing chaos, she was killed. Filled with panic, Tommy and Gary decide to burn the home in an attempt to hide the crime; but the burning home is spotted by a passerby and is reported to the police. After a chase through the frozen woods, the two are captured and in Patty and Tommy's bedroom, the phone rings.... This phone call from Tommy is a defining moment in the book; it is the action which clearly separates the 'before' and 'after' in Patty's life.

Gary turned against Tommy and made a deal with the prosecuting attorney, allowing him to walk away with a sentence of just 5 years of probation. Tommy, on the other hand, was convicted of second degree murder and received a sentence of 25 years to life in prison. I wasn't sure where Stewart O'Nan was going to take this story but I admit that I initially felt frustrated and annoyed with Patty.. with her misplaced loyalty to Tommy and her seeming willful blindness because despite the fact that Tommy had been convicted, she didn't seem to accept his guilt. Patty and Tommy NEVER really talk about the act that put him in jail but we are given clues throughout the novel that Patty IS aware of the truth. There is a scene in which we are given access to Patty's thoughts before the trial began....
"The idea that he might have done it-that the two of them might have done it together- takes
her over slowly, like a drug, paralyzing her. Obviously they've been lying to her.... and she's
gone along with it. She thinks of all the poker nights he didn't get home till three in the
morning and the money he said he won (how could he never lose?)..."

Although I didn't understand Patty's loyalty to a husband who had not only been lying to her but had been committing crimes.. crimes which ultimately left him imprisoned and her alone awaiting the birth of their child, I became completely immersed in her life and couldn't stop myself from turning the pages and yes, even rooting for her. The early drama of this novel quickly gave way to quiet... to a stillness and sameness that characterizes everyone's daily life. Patty was forced to leave the home she and Tommy had been renting and had to move in with her mother, even though the relationship between the two had been fraught with old and new baggage. Patty gave birth to a son, Casey, and then, despite having no marketable skills, she had to find a job to support herself and her son. And through all of this, Patty dutifully traveled to the prison each weekend to visit Tommy.

The novel followed Patty through the next 27 years of her life. Nothing happened and EVERYTHING happened... LIFE happened. My hope was that Patty might finally catch a break but despite her best efforts , she continued to work long, grueling hours at low-paying jobs and she and Casey frequently lived in poverty. And the effects of Tommy's incarceration were noticeable on Casey too. He was an intelligent child but was often withdrawn and aloof and Patty became aware the Casey was sometimes being teased about his father being in prison, so she worried about him constantly. Patty continued to visit Tommy in prison as often as she could, even though he was transferred to other prisons twice over the years.. each time making her trips to visit him longer and longer. Patty was often lonely and was aware of the judgment of many in her community; but she learned to keep all that she was feeling locked inside, even forcing a false brightness when she visited Tommy...
"She lies to him every time she talks to him. She tells him she doesn't mind the drive, that it's
pretty this time of year. She tells him things are going fine at work, that she has enough money....
She tells him she's always thinking of him... More often, she lies by not telling him things....
She doesn't tell him that she's tired... She can't tell him how the other day when she burned the
omelet she was making, she dumped the pan in the sink and kept walking, out the back door and
into the yard and the rain......"

In this story, time seemed to move at a glacier-like pace and yet, simultaneously flew with dizzying quickness. This novel was an incredibly moving story of a courageous woman and her conflicted, difficult life. Stewart O'Nan doesn't make excuses for; nor does he try to justify Tommy's crimes; but he DOES seem to be presenting a commentary of sorts about the dehumanization that prison creates, not only for the inmates but also the inmates' families. Each time Patty visits the prison, she is aware that she is at the mercy of the prison officials and guards and their often cruel, arbitrary rules. She often thinks....
"The way the system's set up, it's like a price that they're supposed to pay over and over until
they give up and stop loving the people they've come to see."

Although there is a broader societal theme in this novel that I was always aware of, I was simply caught up in the rich, complex life of Patty Dickerson... a woman who courageously lived, struggled, loved her child and held onto shreds of hope that perhaps one day she would have her husband home with her and her family would be together again finally. As I finished reading the novel, I couldn't help but think of all the 'Patty Dickersons' in the world, struggling and hoping but never allowing themselves to feel disappointed simply because they had learned to never expect they would encounter good luck anyway. Perhaps I might have made different decisions from the ones Patty made but I realized that each day, she made a conscious decision... she CHOSE to remain loyal to her marriage and she chose to ENDURE. I don't know if endurance is the mark of a good marriage but Patty makes endurance look like an honorable goal.

[Matt · Rating 4 out of 5]

There is a very small list of professions dramatized in modern novels, television shows, and movies. Drama requires that a protagonist be able to engage in the action at any time; as such, he or she can’t be helping someone fill out a loan application while there’s an international conspiracy to unravel. The most popular fictional jobs belong to doctors, lawyers, and law enforcement officials, since a story’s drama can arise organically from the job. Outside of that realm, fictional professions tend to get a bit vague, leading to characters who are “investors” or “writers,” which implies a stable income without the necessity of being in an office from nine-to-five.

A big exception to this rule is Stewart O’Nan. The people who populate his novels are distinctly working class, with distinctly working-class jobs. They are not high-priced attorneys in three-piece suits, or brilliant physicians with god complexes; rather, they work as short-order cooks, in factories, or out on highway crews. O’Nan’s willingness to venture from the glossy worlds of the upwardly mobile has earned him a reputation as something of a balladeer of blue collar America.

This is true, to an extent. O’Nan has an exceptionally keen eye for the commonplace, the everyday details that are familiar to most of us who aren’t out solving murders or separating Siamese twins in a stalled elevator with only a paper clip and some pasta salad. His characters have stunted ambitions, work dreary jobs for low pay, struggle with balky automobiles and try to escape from mounting debt.

Sounds entertaining, right?

Of course, if that’s all his books were about, there wouldn’t be much point in reading them. If I wanted to read about a crappy job, broke-down cars, and everlasting debt, I don’t need to open a novel. I’d just read my own blog.

Instead, O’Nan has a tendency to use a genre hook to reel you in, to get you to pick the book off a crowded shelf and start reading. This hook might be something like a missing girl, or a shooting, or a man going to prison. Whereas most novels would make that hook the locus of the drama, O’Nan attacks the subject from an oblique angle. He uses the extraordinary as a means to explore the ordinary.

In The Good Wife (not to be confused with anything having to do with Juliana Margulies or Chris Noth), a man named Tommy Dickerson is convicted of murder and sent to prison for 28 years. (This information comes from the back cover, so I don’t count it as a spoiler. Of course, if you’re reading this book without a cover, it might be. But you’re not supposed to do that). There’s a lot of directions an author can go with a premise like that. You can make the story about the killing; you can make it a whodunit; you can craft a courtroom drama; or you can tell a prison tale that ends with a painstakingly excavated tunnel and a joyous reunion in Zihuatanejo.

O’Nan chooses an entirely different tact. His main character is Tommy’s wife, Patty, who is pregnant when the story begins, on the night of the crime that will forever change her life. The early parts of the story, which are the most detailed, concern Patty’s reaction to Tommy’s arrest, her attempts to get him a lawyer, and her experience sitting through the trial.

Once the conviction has been handed down, and Tommy sent packing to the penitentiary, the novel starts to take larger temporal leaps. Years go by, marked by successive Thanksgivings and Christmases (The Good Wife takes place in New York State, and begins in the 70s, with the Vikings and Steelers in Super Bowl IX. O’Nan referenced this same game in Snow Angels. As a Vikings fan, I find this hurtful). We follow Patty’s struggles as she has to move out of her home and in with family; raise a child; find a job; and make the long drive to visit Tommy in the clink.

The story is told entirely from Patty’s point of view. There isn’t a scene in the novel where Patty is not present (which leads to some moments where, as an attorney, I was shaking my head; I seriously doubt that any defense attorney would be plotting strategy with his client’s wife or, shockingly, leaving important tactical decisions up to her). This means that a lot of the tropes you might expect from a prison-themed novel are not present. There are no prison riots, no shower rapes, no escape plots. The only parts of the prison we see are the parts Patty sees: the outer walls and razor wire; the visiting room. The only things we hear about prison are the things Tommy decides to tell her.

This confined point-of-view means that supporting characters tend to recede into the background. What we learn of them we learn in snatches of dialogue; what we know of them is limited by what Patty knows. O’Nan’s narrative elisions can be frustrating to readers acclimated to the typical doling of information found in most books. He will mention things you think will become important later, but are never brought up again. It’s as though he is trying to see how often he can flaunt the dictum of Chekov’s Gun.

For instance, O’Nan drops several hints of a complicated familial history with regards to Patty’s late father and the estranged relationship between two of her sisters (Shannon and Eileen). One could reasonably expect these seeds, dutifully planted by the author, to bear some fruit. They do not. Rather, like a drunk burnt-out Johnny Appleseed, O’Nan tosses dramatic seedlings into the winds, without a second thought as to whether they fall onto fertile soil or an asphalt road.

From the few O’Nan novels I’ve read, I’ve come to expect and accept this. In a way, I’ve come to enjoy it. Life is not a three-act play; the world cannot be broken down into rising action, climax, and falling action. O’Nan understands this. His characters, and by extension, the reader, have limited information; in his characters lives, things do not always resolve neatly.

This is a quiet, subtle story. It is about waiting, persevering, sacrificing, and hoping. There are no big, explosive moments. (Patty, for instance, never hides a file in a homemade apple pie). The dramatic high-points, such as Patty getting approved for conjugal visits in a prison trailer, are really understated compared to the fireworks in other novels.

What impressed me most about The Good Wife was its epic scope, contained in only 308 pages. By the time you reach the final page, you’ve been with Patty, and her son Casey, for nearly three decades. Patty has gone from a young woman in the blush of early adulthood, to late-middle age, while Casey transforms from a baby to a college graduate. There aren’t a lot of novels that follows a person so intently as they change, not only psychologically, but physically. In a way, The Good Wife is like a hillbilly Bildungsroman. When I finished, I felt a profound sadness at leaving Patty, and I think a lot of that had to do with the fact that she’d grown up on the page.

O’Nan’s literary style is as subtle as his storytelling. He writes short, matter-of-fact sentences, with very few adjectives, metaphors, or similes. I suppose that’s how he’s able to pack so much information into such a short book. Despite the unadorned prose, The Good Wife is eminently readable and never uninteresting.

One of the only quibbles I had in the entire book was Patty’s prejudice towards the legal system in general, and public defenders in particular. I understand this was a character trait, but geez, lady, give it a rest. Based on the disclosed facts, your husband was guilty of murder. What did you expect your public defender to do? Change the very fabric of a past reality? Sure, ma’m, I make $40,000 a year and have 250 other clients, but I’ll go right ahead and turn day into night and night into day, just as soon as I get done with my evening shift multiplying loaves at the Walk on Water Café. I know I’m biased on this score, but it’s more than a little disconcerting how unrepentant and blame-displacing both Patty and Tommy turn out. They don’t care about the victim; they don’t care about taking responsibility; all they care about is finding someone else to take the fall. This is true to life, to be sure, but a little tough to swallow in a protagonist.

Another problem I had was the nature of Patty and Tommy’s relationship. We enter the story the night Tommy gets arrested and never look back. There are no flashbacks and precious few remembrances of earlier, better days. Accordingly, we have to take it strictly on faith that Tommy is the kind of guy worth waiting 30 years for. (Frankly, from what we learn about him, he is not worth Patty’s devotion).

In a way, The Good Wife is excruciating to read. There are times when you can palpably feel the weight of years stacked against Patty. There are times when her hopelessness becomes your own.

That sounds more depressing than I intended. Let’s try again:

The Good Wife is a story of one life lost, one life wasted, and one life put on hold. It is told without bitterness; instead, the tone is melancholic, sometimes remorseful, but always, surprisingly, tinged with hope.

[Jeanette · Rating 4 out of 5]

Loyalty when it doesn't come easy. O'Nan knows marginal blue collar people, their families; be it rural, urban, suburban. This tale of a woman who doesn't run from a reality that takes more than it gives could be a tale of thousands of good wives. The kind who keep the promises they make, regardless of lack of pleasant outcomes.

I'm going to read all he has written. It's marvelous to find an author that has the voice of the people of your actual life. Not takers, but givers. Who work and live and play the modest hand of cards given to them with honest effort and unselfish dignity.

[Melanie · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was an ok read for me. I was interested enough to finish. I wanted to see what life decisions the main character would make throughout the years her husband spends in prison. Mine would have been very different.

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

The sadness of this book, the long life story of a woman whose husband goes to jail for murder while she is pregnant with his child, reminded me of the big open lost sadness of Norman Mailer's The Executioner's Song, even though the story is far less sensational. This is America not as a place of cruelty and menace, as in Cormac McCarthy, or a place of unrealized dreams, or a place of great injustice - it is less definite than that. It is a place of disconnection, of small lives, modest hopes. Lives hemmed in by circumstance, by fate, by mere accident. Although O'Nan writes of working class people, it really is everyone's sadnes, deep down. That said, this is an extraordinarily sad story - a sadness without the comfort of sorrow or drama.

[Jenn · Rating 5 out of 5]

*sigh* God, I loved this book so much. Stewart O'Nan is the king of making something mundane that no one would ever think about and sympathize and completely engross yourself in their life. Every single O'Nan book is utterly different but each one brings you into a life you never would have thought about. I'll admit it, I'm an O'Nan fangirl. PROUDLY.

[Jay · Rating 4 out of 5]

Stewart O’Nan’s eulogy of a wife’s trials and tribulations as her husband serves out a 28-year sentence for murder. Here again O’Nan soars as the chronicler of ordinary people who are part of the complex matrix of American life.

[Myfanwy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Told in a matter-of-fact, unsentimental way, The Good Wife tells the story of one family and 25 years of their lives as they work through the New York state penal system.

Tommy Dickerson does something stupid. He follows his friend Gary's lead and ends up involved in a murder for which he (and not Gary) pays the price--25 years in prison. At the time of his arrest, his wife Patty is pregnant. This is her story.

We see through her eyes the frustration of the poor as they try to work the system. Everything is against them, including, it seems, the public defenders. Then as the wife of a prisoner we see Patty at the mercy of the system again--as items are confiscated and her husband transferred from prison to prison (moving farther and farther away--to Dannemora and farther northwest, to eventually Bare Hill in Malone) as she is left to make due as a single mother.

Though they do not thrive, their marriage survives and their son makes it through college and ends up with a great job. It's at the end when Tommy is released and they are together again as a family (like they never were before) that we realize that all of these years have been not just a sentence for Tommy, but for all the rest of them as well.

Yes, Tommy was guilty of a crime. Even if the didn't commit the actual murder, he was there and could have stopped it. But the key to this story is not his guilt or innocence, rather it is about what happens to the family, the extended family, the friends of those imprisoned. What is the world like through their eyes. And you walk away from the book asking yourself, what would I do if my loved one was in jail? Would I be able to persevere as Patty does? Would I be such a good wife?

It's a fascinating, quick read and if you have not read O'Nan before, you should know that he is great. He has a no nonsense approach to telling a story that is utterly engaging and in this book, he has succeeded in doing just that.

[Pam · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've read most of O'Nan's books. In some of them, lots of stuff happens -- an epidemic and a fire in A Prayer for the Dying, a car accident and a haunting in The Night Country, a murder in Snow Angels. But his books where "nothing happens" are just as interesting -- Last Night at the Lobster, Wish You Were Here, and this one.

There's more than one way to look at Patty's dedication to her husband, her "steadfastness" through his 28 years in prison Could be she just doesn't have the smarts, the will, or the imagination to do anything else. Or maybe she's deeply in love with Tommy. Some of us would take the line of least resistance, but in Patty's case, what line is that? Does she divorce Tommy and live with the guilt of deserting him when he needs her the most? Or does she do everything she can to make him part of the family?

It didn't seem like she made a conscious choice, one way or the other. She briefly considered divorce but didn't really give herself a good reason to stay married. It was a hardship to visit Tommy so often, which she also did almost without thinking of alternatives.

I think that's how many of us go through our lives. We make choices without thinking too deeply about them. We don't do what other people might think is best. Sometimes we're selfish, sometimes not. We can't always explain our actions, even to ourselves. I like that O'Nan recognizes this. I wouldn't want all my fictional characters to be like this, but it's very honest.

[K · Rating 2 out of 5]

No offense, Marg, but reading this book reminded me of trudging through the streets on a cold, rainy day to run long and necessary errands without a car. Slog slog slog. Yes, it was well-written, but talk about depressing.

Patty is pregnant with her first child when her husband Tommy gets mixed up in a breaking and entering gone awry. Someone is murdered, and Tommy ends up going to prison. The book chronicles Patty's life raising her child on her own, standing by her (undeserving in my opinion) man, money problems, kid problems, yadda yadda yadda.

Stewart O'Nan has a good eye for detail and is an engaging writer, but hardly anything happy ever happened in this book -- the developments were either more sad or less sad. Patty's loyalty to Tommy was difficult for me to understand, although I admired it. Certain family dynamics that looked interesting were never really developed. And did I mention it was depressing?

My sister loved this but if you ask me, I'd say look for something a little more uplifting -- it won't be hard to find.

[☕Laura · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is so simple and straightforward, yet so engrossing. It is just the story of one wife making her way through her husband's incarceration, playing the hand that life has dealt her as best she can. This simple story is presented in a very objective, non-judgemental way, without sensationalizing or falling back on stereotypes. Patty felt very real and I felt very connected to her. Well done.

Ratings:

Writing 4
Story line 5
Characters 5
Emotional impact 4

Overall rating 4.5

[Alaina · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Good Wife is about Patty Dickerson and how she's pregnant with her first child patiently waiting for her husband, Tommy, to come home. It's a snowy night when the phone starts ringing off the hook. It's Tommy and he's in jail. He's a thief and got caught during a robbery. Unfortunately for Tommy, he's been convicted of arson and murder. So he receives a 25 year sentence for second degree murder.

Now this book is sad. Due to Tommy's actions/consequences.. Patty has to struggle day in and out to make ends meet. All of this is during a depression as well so that's pretty rough on anyone. It was hard to read about all of her struggles because she had to move out of her house, raise a child, find a job, and still somehow make visits to see Tommy.

Overall, I didn't really care about Tommy. We only heard certain things from him when he decided to tell her during their visits. I have to give mad props for Patty though because of everything she did while he was away doing time.. well, it must've been super hard. I don't know how many people would be able to do that and stick with the person in jail. That's love and commitment right there.

[Sandra · Rating 2 out of 5]

My first Stewart O'Nan book. I kept reading until the end because I thought something was going to happen, maybe a suicide, who knows...
But nothing did happen.
Of course I felt for Patty, she has a very hard life. But overall I was bored. Sometimes O'Nan describes every little detail like which ingredients she needs to prepare dinner or which cookies she bakes, then he skips years ahead. At some point the boy is about to fail maths and then on the next page skippign ahead some years he is a grade A student. Why leave a development like this out and tell us about the cookies??

What annoyed me was him telling us about a certain event that might happen (like Tommy being moved to another prison, waiting for a letter about the family reunion weekends in the trailer, some job Patty applied for) and then instead of building on it a bit (oooh I might happen, it might not...) he tells us in the very next sentence "oh but she didn't get the job".

[Lynn Asmus · Rating 4 out of 5]

I lived in Patty's world for the few days it took to read this book. O'Nan can create a setting, a mood, a sense of time and place in a few sentences. I am there in the courtroom, I am riding in the car with Patty, Her story is sad, but really, she is not. Never depressed and only occasionally self pitying but quickly recovers. Does what she has to do, plays the hand she, through no fault of her own, is dealt. I loved this book. My only question for her would be why she didn't question where he got the money to pay off the truck and where all the tools, workout equipment, etc. came from. Same as one asks why the wives of men involved in investor fraud if they didn't think there was too much money in their bank account. Does that make Patty a little bit culpable. She is definitely not stupid. She only contemplates this once and only briefly. I think she can't bear the thought and so buries it. This would make a great book club read.

[Gerri Leen · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am endeavoring to read all of O'Nan's books, and so far I've only met up with one that didn't hold me. I'd held off on this one because the subject matter didn't really appeal: a young woman must make a life for herself and her child while her husband is in jail for murder. Yeah, not the feel good story of the year. And it is about just about nothing, with ordinary people at every turn.

And yet, I find that it is one that has stayed with me, the same way Last Night at the Lobster did. O'Nan may, in fact, be at his best when he writes ordinary people doing ordinary things. He brings poetry to their lives and wrings emotion that we can relate to out of the everyday.

Rated: A

[Corrie · Rating 1 out of 5]

If your husband robbed houses without you ever knowing, accidentally killed an old woman during the process, got arrested, got sentenced to 20-30 years in jail, never explained himself, and left you with nothing but an unborn baby, would you wait around for him for 20 years, visit him routinely though he was inprisoned thousands of miles away, and pine for the good old days? Me neither. I couldn't believe this story.

[Aaron Gertler · Rating 5 out of 5]

In a world where domestic fiction were still the most respectable genre, The Good Wife could be our generation's Anna Karenina... or something.

This novel, without taking up too much space, tells the epic story of a woman abandoned, accidentally, by the man she loved. She manages to retain her dignity and honor throughout, but she's not perfect, and the years take a natural toll on her. Still, you can sense that she lives a real life even outside of the novel, that we're only seeing bits and pieces of what a real person -- any real person -- has to experience between young adulthood and late middle age. I suppose that many books try to do this, but I've rarely seen it done so well.

What else can I say? Readers will learn a few things about parts of the world they probably don't know much about (how many fictional protagonists spend time as highway construction workers?). The non-central characters still read like real people with their own lives to live. The time-skipping happens as gracefully as possible (considering the need to squeeze 28 years into 320 pages).

This is just... well, it's not fancy, but it's a really good book. I read it at a time when I'd been reading a lot of fanciful sci-fi epics and modern literary fiction, and The Good Wife helped to ground me in the lives of real people for a time. That was valuable for me. If you also tend to shy away from realistic fiction, it may be valuable for you as well.

[Theresa · Rating 2 out of 5]

I listened to this one but that didn't make me like it any better. The story here is that the main character's husband gets drunk with his friend one night and breaks into an old lady's house. In the process of trying to rob the old lady, the old lady accidentally gets killed. The story deals with how the wife handles her husband's 25+ year prison sentence and raises their child (she was pregnant when he went to prison) with very little money. This woman works all kinds of low paying jobs since she has no degree for very little fulfillment or enjoyment. And then gets up in the wee hours of the morning to ride a bus or drive herself (and her son) to the prison to visit. It would have been so much easier if she had left him and found someone else.

I kept expecting her to leave him and find someone else to help her raise their child but she doggedly sticks by him (even though her family disagrees) right up until his release on parole at the end of the book. I'm still not sure about this one.

[Barb H · Rating 3 out of 5]

Stuart O'Nan has been described as "the bard of the working class". In this case he has skillfully crafted a wrenching tale of a young woman, Patty, whose husband has been convicted of a heinous crime and sentenced to a prolonged prison sentence.

O'Nan has remarkably captured the depths of despair and hopelessness for this young woman. In addition, the widespread effects of the situation are sensitively addressed. One can clearly view the economic and social status and the frustrations for Patty and her family.

This is certainly not an uplifting story, but O'Nan's spare, yet sensitive writing certainly draws in the reader to this unique novel.

[Darcy · Rating 1 out of 5]

Bought it at a used book sale with a few other books. If you like stories about a man in prison and what life is like for his wife who must go on without him then check this out. Again I would be happy to give my copy away.

[itchy · Rating 3 out of 5]

ocr:
p29: The cop steers her past the metal detector to a windowless of fice with a big steel desk like the kind her teachers ruled from in grade school, a plain chair on either side, a foil ashtray.

p30: "...1 know that's no excuse."

p47: They have their backs to her, mobbing someone else--not Donna bit a tall woman hiding behind Jackie 0 sunglasses, her hennaed hair freshly done under a purple scarf.

p59: All morning they drive back and forth in a convoy, Patty leading in her car, Eileen following in her Bronco, then Cy in his truck with the big stuff They do it room by room, moving from the rear of the house to the front, saving the garage for last.

p66: "...1 think I'm going to try the elephant."

p83: Patty stayed with her then, keeping the household going, making sure she are.

p87: She's weak and afraid he'll slide off He has a cap of dark hair, but what impresses Patty most are his fingers, perfect all the way down to the tiny nails.

p126: Putty's the last one left.

278: "No, but if you see a rest area, 1 could use one."

Almost haunting. The simplicity is so vivid.

This would make a good break from the usual shit. If one needs it.

[M · Rating 4 out of 5]

As an English teacher, I am often asked why we bother reading fiction. What can we possibly learn from made up stories? There are several answers to this question, but the one that resonates most with me is what Nasar Afisi points out in her memoir, which is that fiction - good fiction - makes us uncomfortable in our moral skin and reminds us that there is more than one way to view the world. By presenting conflicts and complex issues, fiction reminds us how ambiguous even morality can be and to take all situations with a grain of salt.
TGW is the fourth book I have read by Stewart O'Nan, and I think, his best. It not only has both his keen eye for detail and character as well as - this time - an actual plot - but it achieves this very paradigm shift that great fiction is meant to accomplish.
If you have ever traveled upstate and passed judgement on the lifestyle there - the seeming simplicity, the dead end-ness - or been dismissive about the cashier scanning your groceries - or thought a criminal serving his twenty years is simply paying his dues to society and deserves no sympathy - or thought his long suffering wife at home should have left him ages ago and salvaged her life - then this book is a must. Because I have been guilty of all of the above and despite - or perhaps even because - this is a work of fiction, I became completely sensitized to the plight of people whose trajectory of life is initially so foreign then, upon reading, painfully familiar and ultimately sympathetic.
Patty, O'Nan's understated and unassuming heroine, who lives in a small town, has little education and is otherwise nothing outstanding, gets a call one night that her simple husband Tommy, known for the occasional rowdy bar night and petty theft, has been incarcerated and this time for murder.
The story will not make a hero out of him, or cover his crime - what he did was stupid, ill advised and more on the head of his so called friend Gary who gets off scot free by selling Tommy out - but in her small way Patty becomes a hero for being a modern day Penelope but without the smarmy self righteousness that Curtis Sittenfeld and others are so fond of. Rather she is so human, and so very likable, for simply putting one foot before the other and never once lying to herself or to the reader.
This book serves as something of an indictment against the legal system - how slimy it is, how cruel, yet how stuck it is in serving the purpose it must serve - as well as the American Dream for, let's face it, there isn't a whole lot for someone like Patty to do to succeed. In addition it is an all around engaging and wonderful story.
I will say that while O'Nan does an admirable job of showing the changes in the relationship and characters over time, at times the pace was too swift or too slow, and the changes weren't always realistic or developed enough. Patty and Tommy's son Casey is obviously disturbed for having grown up this way yet largely left alone - he also turns out to be rather smart, which seemed a bit random and not dealt with much. Other than a few quibbles, though, what I appreciated most about this novel was that it made me root for the team I would orinairily turn up my nose at, and that is what we read for.

[El · Rating 3 out of 5]

Patty Dickerson is woken one night by a phone call notifying her of her husband's arrest. Through a series of unfortunate penal events, Tommy is put behind bars for his activities. Patty becomes "the good wife" in that she struggles to balance her life with being there for her husband in jail. The struggles themselves are the bulk of the story - from having to move in with her family, raising their son on her own, taking a series of dead-end and low-paying jobs, driving hours both ways in order to see her husband for just over one hour... it's touching to see Patty's efforts, whether one agrees with them or not.

Books written by men that are told from a woman's perspective always sort of intrigue me. Women in literature usually get the brunt of all sorts of negative stereotypes (even women characters in literature written by women), so when someone like O'Nan does it relatively well, and manages to write a convincing passage about giving birth, I take more notice. The story itself is probably not that fantastic. Not much seems to happen, but the relationships between the characters is definitely worth the read. They are (as they are in all of O'Nan's books) REAL PEOPLE with real emotions. They sit around and smoke pot at bedtime and bake apple pies for holiday dinners and work at Montgomery Ward or Ruby Tuesday's. I like that in O'Nan's writing because these are the people everyone knows, if you pay attention long enough to the folks around you.

[Louise Behrendt Miller · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another O’Nan day-in-the life story; this one about Patty and Tommy (actually , more about Patty), and what their life looks like after Tommy is convicted of murder. Unlike An American Marriage, this husband actually committed the crime; although his level of culpability is not clear ( he and a buddy, both drunk, break into an elderly woman’s house to steal some guns; she winds up dead; not clear who wielded the weapon). But Patty stands by her man, the wisdom of which is never at issue. The story ( told entirely in third person omniscient) takes Patty over the course of over 20 years, from her role as a new mother and new wife of a convicted felon, through her life visiting Tommy, raising a son on her own, taking menial jobs to make ends meet, dealing with random and seemingly punitive prison transfers making her frequent visits even more challenging, and ultimately, Tommy’s release. Not much happens, but everything happens. To paraphrase a line from the book, Stewart— you are breaking my heart.

[Melissa · Rating 2 out of 5]

I almost gave this 3 stars, but I feel like I'm always too generous with my ratings, and besides, I didn't really like it all that much. It was pretty good, I suppose. I found it a bit boring is all. It's the story of a woman who's husband is found guilty of murder while she's pregnant with his kid. It follows her life throughout her husband's 30 years in prison. It's sad. I wanted her to move on with her life, but she really does love her husband, so she sticks it out. Overall, I just couldn't get really into the story - it was very mundane, like when someone starts telling you a story about someone you've never met, and it's not funny or exciting in any way, so you really don't care. That's how I felt reading this. I wound up being interested in the outcome, but still, a bit boring.

[Vivienne Strauss · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not easy to rate this one. Top notch writing from O'Nan again but I couldn't seem to drum up any sort of empathy for the main characters no matter how hard I tried. Patty's refusal to accept her husband as anything other than a good guy was maddening. Tommy's lack of remorse or any kind of acknowledgement for his actions, repugnant. At times I was hoping their lives would get easier but I never really cared if he got out of prison.

[Linda Boyd · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a really good book. The story was a little sad, it is about Patty Dickerson's life after her husband gets into some legal trouble. The changes that happened in their life during this time. It makes you wonder if you were put into this same situation would you make some of the same decisions and choices that Patty did - I'm not so sure......

[Terri · Rating 4 out of 5]

I like it, I love these deep, thoughtful, books, not for everyone.

[AngryGreyCat · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Good Wife by Stewart O’Nan is a book that I saw featured on a List Challenges list (of course, I can’t remember which one) .Years ago I read another book with the same title by Jane Porter. Jane Porter’s book was a straight up romance/women’s fiction, this “Good Wife” is not.

Stewart O’Nan’s The Good Wife is about the strength of a marriage that is tested beyond belief. A pregnant Patty receives a phone call in the middle of the night, not the stereotypical call about an accident or a death, this is a call about her husband’s involvement in a crime, a serious crime. The book then follows Patty as she and her marriage survive against immense obstacles. Her husband’s trial, the denial of bail, incarceration, the appeal process, and relocations to prisons hours away from Patty’s home are interspersed with the regular life trials, crappy jobs, living with her mom, and raising a child on her own. Patty endures it all for 28 years. An excellent depiction of how incarcerations impacts entire families, not just the prisoner. O’Nan does a very good job of creating sympathtic characters, despite their life choices.

[Lisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

So most of the action in this book takes place in my hometown and all of it in my home state so that certainly made it more enjoyable for me. The author shows a deep understanding of the life of the underachievers and the economically depressed in upstate NY, or at least an understanding that resonates with my memories of the place when I lived there. I really appreciated the first half of the book, as we are taken through the tragedy of the crime, the trial and its outcome for "the good wife." At some point it seemed like the author lost interest, or wasn't able to capture the long monotonous "middle years" of her life. She never seemed as connected to the son she saw every day as she was to his mostly absent father. I wasn't sure that rang true for me, as a mother (and only myself an average one), but maybe that was part of the point of the book. I'm sure some people will have a tough time or get frustrated - but even if you only enjoy half of this book, for me at least it was a real enjoyment of a different story and a different character, a woman who is not privileged by upbringing or her own intelligence (the special person who rises above her background).