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Where Has This Book Been My Whole Life?

It’s crystal clear that my recent reading blahs are a thing of the past. Despite knowing that A Reliable Wife was only published last March, I feel like so much time was wasted before I read it. Hadn’t I read review, after review, after review, after review, after review? I may have only myself to blame, but I feel like it’s one of those books that has been written just for me. Have you ever felt that way?

I started A Reliable Wife on Saturday night. Just before bed, I read the first chapter. Hadn’t had to get to sleep in order to keep my points for Game On Diet, I would have read more. Yesterday, I could not stand to put the book down. This book is dark, mysterious, sexual, and thoughtful. Today I was reading it in bits and snatches at traffic lights (a bad habit I try my best to fight), on the elevator between the 1st and 2nd floors at work, and any other spare moment I wasn’t working. I cannot get enough of it. I can tell right now by the way I’m getting distracted from writing this post to read one page more that I will be finishing this novel before I go to sleep tonight.

As I’m lousy at marking down passages I love to share with you in my reviews, I used a receipt to mark page 191, the page containing the paragraph that I got so engrossed in that my fellow traveler had to beep his horn at me. Mea maxima culpa, sir. I have a feeling you might have needed a little prompting yourself if you had a copy of this book in your car, too:

He had meant to be so many things. He had meant to be a poet. He had meant to be a lover and collector of art, to encourage young artists and have them gather around him. He meant to live his life in an orgy of sensation, according to the sensual rules of attraction and seduction. He had meant to be a father, to have children to inherit his love of the arts and the flesh. Instead, he had lost his heart’s deepest passions; one day he woke up and realized they were gone, amputated as surely as an arm, cut off by the death of his little girl and the infidelities of his wife, the intractable rage he felt toward his bastard child. His affections and obsessions had been replaced by clean shirts and half-slept in sheets and polished boots and clear soups. The world of the body and its pleasures had closed over, as a scab closes over a wound.

The only downer about this reading experience is that I will be so close, but ultimately too far away to attend Robert Goolrick’s book signing at Fountain Bookstore in Richmond on February 11th. I will, however, be taking part in the bookstore’s Twitter book club on Monday, February 1st at 6pm EST. Thankfully a good buddy of mine has offered to get the book signed for me. I’ll be pouncing on the book as soon as it gets back.

So there you have it. I have actually torn myself away from this book long enough to tell you to run, not walk, to the library or bookstore and pick this book up. If you have a Kindle or Nook, it’s even easier. You won’t regret it and I can’t thank Brittany from Algonquin Books enough for sending me a review copy.

January 25, 2010 | Filed Under Reading

Comments

27 Responses to “Where Has This Book Been My Whole Life?”

Lisa
Posted: Jan 25th, 2010 at 10:15 pm

I really liked this one, too. Such interesting characters and it was great to watch them grow.

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Where Has This Book Been My Whole Life?

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27 Responses to “Where Has This Book Been My Whole Life?”

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