Told in a matter-of-fact, unsentimental way, The Good Wife tells the story of one family and 25 years of their lives as they work through the New York state penal system. Tommy Dickerson does something stupid. He follows his friend Gary's lead and ends up involved in a murder for which he (and not Gary) pays the price--25 years in prison. At the time of his arrest, his wife Patty is pregnant. This is her story. We see through her eyes the frustration of the poor as they try to work the system. E...

No offense, Marg, but reading this book reminded me of trudging through the streets on a cold, rainy day to run long and necessary errands without a car. Slog slog slog. Yes, it was well-written, but talk about depressing.Patty is pregnant with her first child when her husband Tommy gets mixed up in a breaking and entering gone awry. Someone is murdered, and Tommy ends up going to prison. The book chronicles Patty's life raising her child on her own, standing by her (undeserving in my opinion) m...

Loyalty when it doesn't come easy. O'Nan knows marginal blue collar people, their families; be it rural, urban, suburban. This tale of a woman who doesn't run from a reality that takes more than it gives could be a tale of thousands of good wives. The kind who keep the promises they make, regardless of lack of pleasant outcomes.I'm going to read all he has written. It's marvelous to find an author that has the voice of the people of your actual life. Not takers, but givers. Who work and live and...

I've read most of O'Nan's books. In some of them, lots of stuff happens -- an epidemic and a fire in A Prayer for the Dying, a car accident and a haunting in The Night Country, a murder in Snow Angels. But his books where "nothing happens" are just as interesting -- Last Night at the Lobster, Wish You Were Here, and this one. There's more than one way to look at Patty's dedication to her husband, her "steadfastness" through his 28 years in prison Could be she just doesn't have the smarts, the wi...

If your husband robbed houses without you ever knowing, accidentally killed an old woman during the process, got arrested, got sentenced to 20-30 years in jail, never explained himself, and left you with nothing but an unborn baby, would you wait around for him for 20 years, visit him routinely though he was inprisoned thousands of miles away, and pine for the good old days? Me neither. I couldn't believe this story.

This was an ok read for me. I was interested enough to finish. I wanted to see what life decisions the main character would make throughout the years her husband spends in prison. Mine would have been very different.

I lived in Patty's world for the few days it took to read this book. O'Nan can create a setting, a mood, a sense of time and place in a few sentences. I am there in the courtroom, I am riding in the car with Patty, Her story is sad, but really, she is not. Never depressed and only occasionally self pitying but quickly recovers. Does what she has to do, plays the hand she, through no fault of her own, is dealt. I loved this book. My only question for her would be why she didn't question where he

As an English teacher, I am often asked why we bother reading fiction. What can we possibly learn from made up stories? There are several answers to this question, but the one that resonates most with me is what Nasar Afisi points out in her memoir, which is that fiction - good fiction - makes us uncomfortable in our moral skin and reminds us that there is more than one way to view the world. By presenting conflicts and complex issues, fiction reminds us how ambiguous even morality can be and to...

This book is so simple and straightforward, yet so engrossing. It is just the story of one wife making her way through her husband's incarceration, playing the hand that life has dealt her as best she can. This simple story is presented in a very objective, non-judgemental way, without sensationalizing or falling back on stereotypes. Patty felt very real and I felt very connected to her. Well done.Ratings:Writing 4Story line 5Characters 5Emotional impact 4Overall rating 4.5

The sadness of this book, the long life story of a woman whose husband goes to jail for murder while she is pregnant with his child, reminded me of the big open lost sadness of Norman Mailer's The Executioner's Song, even though the story is far less sensational. This is America not as a place of cruelty and menace, as in Cormac McCarthy, or a place of unrealized dreams, or a place of great injustice - it is less definite than that. It is a place of disconnection, of small lives, modest hopes. L...

I am endeavoring to read all of O'Nan's books, and so far I've only met up with one that didn't hold me. I'd held off on this one because the subject matter didn't really appeal: a young woman must make a life for herself and her child while her husband is in jail for murder. Yeah, not the feel good story of the year. And it is about just about nothing, with ordinary people at every turn.And yet, I find that it is one that has stayed with me, the same way Last Night at the Lobster did. O'Nan may...

Patty Dickerson is woken one night by a phone call notifying her of her husband's arrest. Through a series of unfortunate penal events, Tommy is put behind bars for his activities. Patty becomes "the good wife" in that she struggles to balance her life with being there for her husband in jail. The struggles themselves are the bulk of the story - from having to move in with her family, raising their son on her own, taking a series of dead-end and low-paying jobs, driving hours both ways in order

This novel, The Good Wife by Stewart O'Nan takes place in the mid-1970s in a small town in southern New York state. The story begins with almost cinematic bursts of drama. Two scenes are playing out simultaneously; one scene involves Patty Dickerson, a twenty-seven-year-old woman who is expecting the birth of her first child. It's late at night and Patty is preparing for bed after a long and tiring day and she is anticipating the arrival home of her husband Tommy. This scene is so beautifully wr...

*sigh* God, I loved this book so much. Stewart O'Nan is the king of making something mundane that no one would ever think about and sympathize and completely engross yourself in their life. Every single O'Nan book is utterly different but each one brings you into a life you never would have thought about. I'll admit it, I'm an O'Nan fangirl. PROUDLY.

The Good Wife is about Patty Dickerson and how she's pregnant with her first child patiently waiting for her husband, Tommy, to come home. It's a snowy night when the phone starts ringing off the hook. It's Tommy and he's in jail. He's a thief and got caught during a robbery. Unfortunately for Tommy, he's been convicted of arson and murder. So he receives a 25 year sentence for second degree murder.Now this book is sad. Due to Tommy's actions/consequences.. Patty has to struggle day in and out t...

I listened to this one but that didn't make me like it any better. The story here is that the main character's husband gets drunk with his friend one night and breaks into an old lady's house. In the process of trying to rob the old lady, the old lady accidentally gets killed. The story deals with how the wife handles her husband's 25+ year prison sentence and raises their child (she was pregnant when he went to prison) with very little money. This woman works all kinds of low paying jobs since

There is a very small list of professions dramatized in modern novels, television shows, and movies. Drama requires that a protagonist be able to engage in the action at any time; as such, he or she can’t be helping someone fill out a loan application while there’s an international conspiracy to unravel. The most popular fictional jobs belong to doctors, lawyers, and law enforcement officials, since a story’s drama can arise organically from the job. Outside of that realm, fictional professions

My first Stewart O'Nan book. I kept reading until the end because I thought something was going to happen, maybe a suicide, who knows...But nothing did happen. Of course I felt for Patty, she has a very hard life. But overall I was bored. Sometimes O'Nan describes every little detail like which ingredients she needs to prepare dinner or which cookies she bakes, then he skips years ahead. At some point the boy is about to fail maths and then on the next page skippign ahead some years he is a grad...

In a world where domestic fiction were still the most respectable genre, The Good Wife could be our generation's Anna Karenina... or something.This novel, without taking up too much space, tells the epic story of a woman abandoned, accidentally, by the man she loved. She manages to retain her dignity and honor throughout, but she's not perfect, and the years take a natural toll on her. Still, you can sense that she lives a real life even outside of the novel, that we're only seeing bits and piec...

Stuart O'Nan has been described as "the bard of the working class". In this case he has skillfully crafted a wrenching tale of a young woman, Patty, whose husband has been convicted of a heinous crime and sentenced to a prolonged prison sentence. O'Nan has remarkably captured the depths of despair and hopelessness for this young woman. In addition, the widespread effects of the situation are sensitively addressed. One can clearly view the economic and social status and the frustrations for Patty...