“[T]he writing so mesmerizing it makes one wonder whether Goolrick practices; anyone who can turn a sentence fragment into poetry so well has to work at it. . . . Goolrick's unique tonality and his ability to convey complex emotions in elegant, spare language embed A Reliable Wife in your head.”
"A gothic tale that's as much psychological as it is plot driven . . . satisfying and surprising.”
— CHARLOTTE OBSERVER (4 OUT OF 5)
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“Debut novelist Robert Goolrick has managed a minor miracle. In the kind of precise, literary prose that breathes life into his complicated characters, Goolrick, author of an acclaimed memoir, has also managed a rousing historical potboiler, an organic mystery rooted in the real social ills of turn-of-the-century America...The result is a detailed exploration of love, despair, and the distance people can travel to reach each other that is as surprising, and as suspenseful, as any beach read.”
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Boston Globe
"Astonishing, complex, beautifully written, and brilliant. A Reliable Wife is a nearly forensic look at love in all its incarnations, with all its damages, deceptions, and obsessions, run through with points of light and pinned with ruinous truths."
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Sara Gruen, author of Water for Elephants
“Barbed and canny, with a sharp eye.”
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The New York Times on The End of the World as We Know It
“Searing. . . . [Goolrick is] a gifted writer with a memorable
account of his terribly flawed family.”
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USA Today on The End of the World as We Know It
“Indelible. . . . A devastatingly shrewd no-nonsense description
of mid-20th-century Southern mores and manners that can rank with the work of
Walker Percy or Peter Taylor.”
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Newsweek on The End of the World as We Know It
“A devastating debut. . . . Worthy of William Styron and
Flannery O’Connor.”
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Kirkus Reviews (starred review) on The End of the World as We Know It
“Unnerving, elegantly crafted. . . .Morbidly funny.”
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Entertainment Weekly on The End of the World as We Know It
"...this darkly nuanced psychological tale builds to a strong and satisfying
close."
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Publishers Weekly