The Wives Tale

Over the course of four generations the Dufore women try to make the best of their husband's unusual failings, including Uncle Ab's spontaneous combustion, Rich's second sight, Davy's mysterious liquefaction, and Paul's transformation into a trout

A first novel packed with this much mesmerizing craziness is a rarity. A tale spanning four generations of the Dufore family of rural Esperance, Vt., Wilber's novel seems to have caromed off such influences as Twain, Vonnegut, Faulkner and even John Irving. Uncle Ab is doomed to burst into flames. Poor Davy is literally going soft and rotting like a piece of spoiled fruit. Bobby lives in dread of being hit by a meteor. Old Gran Marie hasn't slept in 70 years. Paul and his little son may have turned into trout. These idiosyncrasies form only a part of the patchwork heritage of the Dufore clan, and women who chose to marry a Dufore will have their hands full. Hilarity and horror overflow these pages in equal measure, sending out an intensely exuberant message that life goes on. Despite occasional confusion owing to the multitude of characters and the century-long time frame, this rich stew of a debut haunts and compels.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

A family saga, with murder, incest, oddball characters, a remote country setting--in fact, all the usual ``American Gothic'' ingredients with a light dusting of magical realism, Vermont-style, thrown in for literary good measure. Generations of Dufores have lived in Esperance in rural Vermont, but something about the family makes marriage to a Dufore a risky proposition. Locals talk of tainted blood, something that gets passed down--``in some families it's the sugar sickness, or a fondness for the bottle.'' And when great-grandson Daniel is brought back to be buried, Marie, well over 90, thinks it's time to ``review'' all the events in her family's life. Her first husband, convinced that the apocalypse was nigh, had taken their only child and jumped into a nearby brook to live safely there as trout; her second husband, the father of the surviving Dufores, had literally rotted away; son Ab had died from spontaneous combustion; and son Rich was haunted by second sight. Grandson Dennis carried rocks in his pockets to stop him from flying away, and great-grandson Daniel, who once murdered a man to protect his young sister, a surviving Siamese twin, committed suicide because his head was crowded with stories demanding to be told. Each generation has courted and married, but the price--particularly for the wives--has always been high. Female Dufores have also been affected, though they tended to flee to the West, never to be seen again. Whatever the Dufores try, Marie decides, ``life just seems to lead you where it wants you to go.'' The trouble is, oddities apart, the Dufores are just too nice really to shock or horrify. Wilber tells a good story well, but this debut novel, readable and entertaining as it is, is a bit of a hybrid--an uneven mix of the comic, the tragic, and the stylistically pretentious. -- Copyright ©1991, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Billed by its publisher as a novel that "adds new dimension to the phrase 'American Gothic,' " The Wives' Tale is too predictable to make a major contribution to the genre. The Dufore family turns Esperance, Vermont into the suicide capital of the country. The rationale behind their fondness for self-destruction is weakly summarized by one of the characters as, "I think that's how it is with the Dufores . . . . Just instinct." What begins as a rollicking account of eccentricities lapses into a dull catalog of deaths. Four generations of the family shoot and slice themselves; they get squashed by meteors or go up in flames. In her fiction debut, Wilber demonstrates a fine ear for dialog and a talent for crisp description. But she creates interesting characters only to destroy them.
- Rita Ciresi, Pennsylvania State Univ., University Park
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.