The Good Wife a Thoughtful Older Novel to Discover

The Good Wife (2005)

By Stewart O'Nan

Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 308 pages.

★★★★

I keep a "Notes" app on my phone with a list of books I plan to read. Four cellphones ago—somewhere between Nokia, Samsung, and iPhone—I lost my note to read Stewart O'Nan's The Good Wife. Recently I walked into the town library and there it was—The Good Wife resting on the to-be-shelved cart. Better late than never, which is ironic as the novel is constructed around the very question of how long one should wait before moving on.

The titular character is Patty Dickerson. She and hubby Tommy are about to welcome their first child into the world. Like many 20-somethings, the Dickersons are legally adults, but not entirely grown up and certainly not financially set. On a fateful night, Tommy celebrates scoring a goal in a hockey game by having a few too many at a bar with his best buddy, Gary. The two break into a supposedly empty house with the goal of stealing some guns in the possession of old lady Wagner. As it transpires, Mrs. Wagner was home, and they end up killing the 79-year-old when she startles them. It was all an accident, Tommy assures Patty, and things will work out soon.

Welcome to blue-collar life in Owego, New York—a real place, by the way—where neither Tommy nor Gary have the coin to hire fancy lawyers. Tommy chooses the path of honor and rejects the district attorney's offer to turn on Gary. Alas, Gary takes that deal and walks, while Tommy gets 20-years to life. Should Patty also walk away? That's easier said than done; she's young, pregnant, financially strapped, and has only a high school diploma. The Good Wife follows Patty through the next 27 years of her life as she tries to piece together a very different future than the one she envisioned for herself and her son Casey. The novel is also an insider's look at blue-collar life, dead-end jobs, tricky family dynamics, self-discovery, and temptations avoided and embraced. It's also a gaze into the New York State penal system—from Auburn to Danemora to Bare Hill.  

O'Nan doesn't dazzle with poetic prose; his strength is placing us inside Patty's mind and circumstances so that we feel the full weight of being dealt a bad hand. O'Nan wisely says almost nothing of the actual crime. By making Tommy's culpability ambiguous, readers are forced to see things through Patty's eyes, not those of abstract ethics. So do we root for Tommy because Patty does, or do we hope he rots? That's another O'Nan sleight of hand. It's very easy to judge anonymous "murderers," but what if you're not sure? And what if you know the criminal? What if that person was your own spouse or flesh and blood?

O'Nan's tale is the best kind of morality tale: one that refuses to offer easy answers. He invites readers to contemplate what they would do in Patty's situation. And then there's that whole social class thing to consider. You know, class, the Great American Denial. It won't take you long to realize that social class determines how many aces you have up your sleeve when that proverbial bad hand is dealt. Most folks don't have any; sociologists speak of "life chances," the correlation between access to resources and the kind of life one will lead. O'Nan dares to suggest, though, that resiliency might be a potential wild card.

Call this novel equal parts grim and hopeful, provocative and touching, breezy and gripping. It's quite a road trip—a series of them actually. The physical road trips are still another what-would-you-do conundrum. Among Patty's travails is the fact that prisons are not places where you can log onto Expedia and book a room. When Tommy is in Auburn, he's just an hour away; when he's in Bare Hill (Malone), he's more than 4 ½ hours distant and Patty doesn't have the money to waste on hotel rooms. Would you drive more than 9 hours for an afternoon visit? How often?

Is Patty really the good wife? There are other possibilities: dupe, desperate, deluded…. You get to choose. And that, ultimately, is what makes this a strong (and timeless) novel. O'Nan knocks down easy rationalizations, calls numerous moral judgments into question, and then trusts his readers to draw their own conclusions. I was glad I did my time and got to enjoy this book.

Rob Weir

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