The Wife's Tale, by Lori Larsens

This new novel by Lori Larsens starts out rather slowly but picks up momentum, as does the main character, Mary Gooch, when it moves from the house in small town Ontario, where she has “worn a groove between the bed and the refrigerator,” to California. Abandoned by her handsome husband on the eve of their 25th anniversary, she travels, for the first time in her life, outside of the narrow sphere where her ever-heavier body has wedged her. What she finds (ultimately, not her husband) surprises both her and the reader. Like Larsens’ The Girls, a story about conjoined twins which is set in Mary Gooch’s neighborhood, this book takes unlikely characters and makes you really care about them. 365 pp.