Good Wife - ISBNLookup.com

From the Publisher

"One of the most authentic contemporary political novels I've read by an American writer. . . . [O'Nan] creates a mood so intense that, as long as the novel lasts, the reader can't escape it."—Nell Freudenberger, The New York Times Book Review

"The Good Wife is powerful, unforgettable. . . . O'Nan knows what Evan S. Connell knew . . . that an unassuming woman might be surprisingly complicated . . . .Patty Dickerson is a wonderful character, and this novel is astonishing."—The Washington Post Book World

"A moving, lyrical, assured piece of work . . . O'Nan is an experienced explorer of the irrationalities of being human."—The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Meg Wolitzer

Like Evan S. Connell's classic 1959 novel Mrs. Bridge, Stewart O'Nan's The Good Wife is the story of an ordinary woman's life over a great sweep of time. Connell used short bulletin-like chapters to create a complete vision of his character's circumstances and limitations; O'Nan's chapters tend to be a little longer, but the effect is similar. The accretion of quotidian detail gives us a kind of timeline of the life of Patty Dickerson, a woman whose husband, Tommy, commits a crime while drunk at the beginning of the novel and ends up spending the remainder of it -- 28 years -- in jail for murder. Also like Mrs. Bridge, The Good Wife is powerful, unforgettable.
— The Washington Post

Library Journal

This engrossing and heartbreaking novel-O'Nan's follow-up to his nonfiction baseball memoir, Faithful-recounts the plight of Patty and Tommy Dickerson, a young married couple expecting their first child. One winter night, Tommy and a friend are arrested and accused of murdering an elderly woman during a bungled burglary; Tommy ends up in prison for 28 years, and Patty decides to stand by him throughout his sentence. The reader-along with many of Patty's family members-wants Patty to leave Tommy and get on with her life. Yet she visits him faithfully, learning the intricacies of prison visits and traveling long and then even longer distances as Tommy is transferred seemingly arbitrarily. All the while, she struggles to earn a living and raise their son. O'Nan has been named one of the best young American novelists by Granta, and it's evident here why. Highly recommended for all public libraries. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 8/04.]-Sarah Conrad Weisman, Elmira Coll. Lib., NY Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

The versatile, accomplished O'Nan follows up the ghostly doings of The Night Country (2003) with a quiet, realistic portrait of a woman waiting-for 28 years-for her husband to get out of jail. Patty is 27 and pregnant when she learns that husband Tommy and his buddy Gary have committed a string of burglaries and are now being charged with murder after an old woman dies during their latest break-in. With seasoned skill, O'Nan spends the first third of the story (through the trial) delineating Patty's situation. Relations are tense with her widowed mother, who has always disapproved of Tommy, and with older sister Shannon, who boasts a more affluent husband and lifestyle. Younger sister Eileen, her closest family ally, is broke, blue-collar, and a little raffish, like Patty and Tommy. In the trial, Gary turns state's witness, Tommy gets 25 to life, and Patty is left to raise baby Casey as a single mother with few job skills. The subsequent scenes episodically sketch her life, front-loaded toward the early years of Tommy's incarceration. Patty learns to cope with the monolithic prison system, at best indifferent to and often actively abusive of the convicts' families. O'Nan focuses on Patty's struggles and growth as she reluctantly moves in with her mother, endures a series of grinding, poorly paid jobs, and sees the scars Tommy's absence inflicts on their slightly aloof son, who nonetheless matures into a decent, responsible young man. The deliberately low-key narrative has few dramatic events-Tommy's abrupt transfer to a more distant prison is the most jarring-and even fewer discussions of people's feelings. Patty simply lives her commitment to her marriage every day for 28 years, and webelieve in it because we believe in the fully dimensional, ordinary but extraordinary character O'Nan has created. She deserves her (qualified) happy ending, long though it is in coming. Another fine effort from a writer who in ten years has crafted nine novels dramatically different in tone and content but impressively consistent in their moral seriousness and artistic conviction.