John's Wife

April 21, 1997
In a starred review PW called this novel of a small-town mall-builder and his disappearing wife "biting and suggestive, a spicy blend of erudition and scatology, epic and farce."

December 1, 1995
John may be a hotshot architect, but it's John's wife who has everyone in thrall in his small town. More sharp-edged observations from the author of A Night at the Movies (Dalkey Archive, 1992).

Starred review from April 15, 1996
John's "money, family, power, good health, high regard, many friends"--and ruthless amorality--dominate his small town on the windswept plain both physically and economically, but it is his spouse's "thereness that was not there" that obsesses his neighbors. "Coveted object, elusive mystery, beloved ideal, hated rival, princess, saint, or social asset, John's wife elicited opinions and emotions as varied and numerous as the townsfolk themselves, her unknowability being finally all they could agree upon, and even then with reservations." As a near-omniscient narrator wanders at will through the dreams and memories, vivid fantasies and contorted psychologies of everyone "else" in town, John's wife is opaque, Object to every other character's Subject. This being postmodernist Coover, reality's boundaries bend and warp: the title character vanishes and reappears; the preacher's wife delivers not-quite twins; Pauline, who has a long history with John, develops an insatiable hunger and begins to grow. At once kaleidoscopic and claustrophobic, bawdy, disturbing, and psychologically penetrating, "John's Wife" deploys a townful of vivid characters and a cat's cradle of complexly interwoven plots to explore some of the puzzles that define the human condition. ((Reviewed April 15, 1996))(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 1996, American Library Association.)