The Wife's Tale

November 9, 2009
Lansens’s hopeful and gentle third novel (after The Girls
), opens in the same fictitious Ontario county as its predecessors, but the heroine’s journey takes her to a vastly different landscape, both literally and spiritually. In Leaford, Mary Gooch’s life is strictly circumscribed—she’s even worn a rut in the carpet between the bed and the kitchen, so often has the 302-pound woman made the trip. So when Mary’s handsome husband disappears on the eve of their silver wedding anniversary, Mary wonders whether her size or her aversion to adventure chased him off. With few clues, Mary leaves her small town for one of the first times in her life, venturing first to Toronto and then to the suburbs of Los Angeles, where a series of encounters with strangers shakes her out of her lethargy. Mary’s journey may be too carefully mapped out, but she’s a wonderful character, and Lansens’s handling of her eventual transformation into someone capable of compassion and acceptance is handled with a light but assured touch.

December 1, 2009
Searching for the husband who disappeared on the eve of their 25th wedding anniversary, an obese woman changes her life.

The mystery in Lansens's follow-up to The Girls (2006) is not why long-suffering Gooch left but what took him so long. Four-hundred-pound Mary has pushed him away for years, distrusting and refusing every gesture of affection. She has been under the sway of what she calls"the obeast" since childhood; she and Gooch fell in love as seniors in high school, after a parasitic infection caused a sudden weight loss. A gifted writer, Gooch gave up his college dreams to marry Mary when she became pregnant. But she miscarried before the wedding, her weight returned, and it increased even more once she learned she could not have children. For years Gooch has tried to interest Mary in the larger world, or in himself, but her only passion has been food. He goes missing after depositing $25,000 from a scratch-and-win lottery game into their joint checking account. Devastated, she is finally galvanized to leave their small Ontario hometown to look for him. Serendipitous events follow. Restaurant receipts lead her to Toronto, where she finds Gooch's long-lost sister, who says he's headed to see his estranged mother in Golden Hills, Calif. On the curb outside LAX, a kindly limo driver picks up Mary and arranges a salon makeover before dropping her at her mother-in-law's house. Gooch isn't there, but while waiting for him in California Mary befriends a divorcee with triplets and a hunky Mexican-American gardener. She warms to Gooch's prickly mother, whose revelations force Mary to reexamine her marriage. Meanwhile, she loses her appetite. By the time she accepts that Gooch may not return, she is svelte and eating only for the right reasons. Readers will still be hungry: While Mary's evolution is all too predictable, Lansens never adequately explains the more enigmatic, sympathetic Gooch.

Redemption Lite.

(COPYRIGHT (2009) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

Starred review from November 15, 2009
Mary Gooch is beyond shock when her husband leaves the night before their silver anniversary party. Jimmy Gooch has always loved her, but with each new traumatwo early miscarriages, her father's death, even the loss of her feral catMary has felt less worthy of his affection and more hungry. Now weighing 302 pounds, Mary can't seem to move past her malaise. Finding $25,000 in their bank account, Mary flies, for the first time, from their small Canadian town to her mother-in-law's home in Southern California, determined to wait for her prodigal spouse. While there, she loses her appetite but discovers a measure of self-worth through the "kindness of strangers." VERDICT Lansens's ("The Girls") portrait of a woman who hides behind the Kenmore as protection from life's heartache is earthy and primal in its pain. Yet Lansens doesn't resort to an overnight makeover to save Mary. Instead, our heroine uncovers a hidden strength she had all along. Those who loved "The Girls" will be pleased that Lansens is back. Highly recommended. [See Prepub Alert, "LJ" 10/15/09.]Bette-Lee Fox, "Library Journal"

Copyright 2009 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

February 1, 2010
Lansens third character-driven novel tracks the highs and lows in the life of Mary Gooch, who still has such a pretty face and a voluminous body. On the evening of Marys twenty-fifth wedding anniversary, her husband, Jimmy, doesnt come home, initiating a domino-like series of actions that turn Marys life around. Initially embarrassed by Jimmys disappearance, and deciding that everyone knew about Jimmy Gooch leaving his fat wife to go on some middle-aged vision quest, she boards a plane for California, where his mother lives and where Mary is sure he will eventually turn up. There she is befriended by an odd m'lange of characters who seem destined to help, including an Israeli taxi driver who takes her to his friends plus-size boutique for a make-over, a single mom whose children adopt Mary as their favorite babysitter, and Jesus Garcia, her mother-in-laws pool cleaner who shares with Mary his own survival strategies. Lansens writes with acute insight into Marys bingeing and depression, fully immersing readers in her protagonists struggle to find a new and better self.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2010, American Library Association.)