I knew nothing about this book when I picked it up. I didn’t even bother to read the blurb on the back of the book I just dived in with trepidation and a hopeful spirit. What I got was nothing like what I was expecting. I was submerged into a tale that truly resonated with me; so much so that at times it felt like kismet that I should be reading this book at this point in my life.
The story centres on Mary Gooch. Mary is a wife, a pharmacy clerk, a daughter, a sister-in-law, a daughter-in-law all in the body of a 302 pound woman. Mary lives in Leaford, Canada; a small town where there are no secrets and everybody is watching everyone else. Mary has grown up in Leaford, fallen in love in Leaford and eaten her way through millions of calories in Leaford.
Lori Lansens tells this tale with a poetic and masterful voice. Her language is rhythmic and captivating. The story is brought to life through the strong voice that Lansens empowers Mary with. While Mary is unable to give voice to her thoughts in her daily life, her internal dialogue is potent and compels this story.
Mary is thrust into leaving her predictable and repetitive life when her Husband, Jimmy Gooch, fails to come how from work on the eve of their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary. This one act of her Husband triggers a reassessment of all the moments in Mary’s life that have lead to this point in time.
Mary remembered, when she was nine years old, stepping off the scale in Dr. Ruttle’s office and hearing him whisper the word to her slight mother, Irma. It was an unfamiliar word, but one she understood in context of the fairy-tale world. Obeast. There were witches and warlocks. So must there be ogres and obeasts. Little Big Mary wasn’t confused by the diagnosis. It made sense to her child’s mind that her body had become an outward manifestation of the starving animal in her gut.
- The Wife’s Tale; page 2.
It’s the battle between Mary and her Obeast that really speaks in this novel. It casts a light on an epidemic that is killing the Western World in a way that is fresh and raw. Addiction to food is as real as any other addiction; gambling, drinking, drugs – it’s all the same mental battle. The voice in the head that compels a person to make the decisions they do. Mary’s voice has 43 years of experience at pushing her buttons. It is the love of her Husband, or more importantly the fear of abandonment that she sometimes confuses as love, that gives Mary the impetus she needs to ignore that voice for the first time in her life.
This novel is a coming of age tale; despite the fact that Mary is 43 years old and should know what she wants from life by now. Mary has hidden in her world. Shut herself off from the judging gaze of those in her community. Her weight has coloured everything; every experience, emotion or event. In her hiding she has given all her power to her Obeast. Every time she ventures into public her low self opinion is reinforced by the actions of others and in turn the Obeast grows stronger.
When her Husband leaves to ‘find himself’ Mary embarks on a single-minded journey to find him. Instead what she finds is the power to overcome her fear of living and ventures outside of Leaford for the first time in her life. Her hunt for her Husband takes Mary to Los Angeles and the home of her Mother-In-Law.
It seems no coincidence that the author has brought small town overweight Mary to Los Angeles, where body image reins supreme. However the experiences that Mary has while in Los Angeles are in no way predictable nor does the end of the book resolve them. It would have been so easy for the author to paint a standard generic view of the beautiful people in Los Angeles, but she skilfully avoids this pothole.
At times the inability of Mary to take control of her life is frustrating and agonizing. Her lack of confidence in her basic decision making is paralysing and has resulted in her relying on her Husband to do a lot of things she now needs to do to survive. With her Husband gone, and no return in sight, she must learn to stand on her own two feet. This struggle for independence is not only a mental one, but it is mimicked in her physicality as well as she is at times unable to support her own weight.
The relationships that Mary develops while in Los Angeles are unpredictable, moving and heart warming. Lansens shows a side of humanity that is often overlooked in this age of instant gratification and individuality. It’s through these relationships that she starts to learn how to believe in herself and her abilities.
This book finished leaving me wanting more. The book, while it ends does not end with everything resolved; which is rare in this age of a thirty-minute wrap up of all of life’s problems. Lansens has created a great novel that should resonate with a multitude of those suffering under the weight of an eating disorder. I am one of these people and for the first time I feel like some of the things that I have experienced in my life have been given a voice in print that is not judgemental nor compassionate; it just tells it like it is and it doesn’t offer the magic solution. It’s just one woman’s story told beautifully and expertly.
Angie Wilson is an avid reader of almost anything. A collector of classics and a junkie for romance she lives in Canberra, ACT with her Husband and their fur kids. When not reading she manages her own website at http://gnomeangel.com - it’s a rambling mess of everything she finds interesting and something’s she has no idea about but is willing to give it the good ole’ college try. Her motto in life; “How hard can it be?”
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