This month's book choice, A Reliable Wife, is my favorite Mince Words with June selection thus far. Don't you agree? Weren't you constantly dying during this book? Weren't you going, "No, she di-ent!" and "He did NOT!" every 48 seconds?
I loved how everyone in this book was despicable in their own way, and yet we liked them all. At least I did. You had Ralph Truitt, who owned the whole town and underpaid everyone in it, while he was ridunkulously rich. Could you believe all the crap he bought throughout this whole book? If that weren't bad enough, you find out he beat his son. And he was kind of the GOOD GUY in the story.
Then there was Catherine, his oh-so-reliable wife. I loved what she said about how she liked the beginnings and ends of things. I feel the same way. Just the other night, I was hanging with some friends, and I thought, What if I were leaving? What if this were the last night I was gonna hang around these friends? Everything took on a new poignancy, thinking that. The middle is boring. Catherine is right.
She was my favorite character, and I know she was a pretty dreadful person, what with fooling Truitt and sleeping with his son Antonio, and, you know, the whole trying to kill Truitt and all. Even with all that, I liked her and wanted her to get whatever she wanted. I mean, she'd had a dreadful life, and had made quite a lot out of herself, you know? She could have just ended up like her sister, but she didn't. Wasn't that a powerful scene when she's with her sister as she dies?
Oh, and her secret garden. I so understood why she was obsessed with that. I think on the inside, she just wanted things to be orderly and lovely and pure, despite all the crap she had going on on the outside. And you know I liked her when she got a bird for what I assume is the same reason.
I even liked the morally bankrupt Antonio. He was hot. And talk about a dreadful life. I know. He could have straightened himself out and grown up at some point. But even Ralph says you can't escape the dreadful things that happen to you. And maybe Antonio would have straighted up had he not, you know, cracked through the thin ice he was always standing on his whole life.
Oh! What a good book! I loved the description of the other house, and I loved the idea that people back then took drugs and were debaucherous just like people now. Who knew? I loved it that Catherine fell in love with Truitt, and oh! I kind of want to try arsenic, just a little, till it stops being fun. Am I the only one?
What are we gonna read next? Suggestions, please.
