The Sunday Wife

Rating:
Summary: Wow, What a Story!
Review: The Sunday Wife kept me awake night after night reading this wonderfully told story. The characters leap from the pages right into real life, crafted beautifully. The setting adds as much to the telling as the story itself, the beautiful Florida panhandle has never been more fittingly described. The charm of the Old South hits head on into the New South and Armageddon has a rival. This is one of the best books I've read all year and I read about one a week. Brava, Cassandra, good job.

Rating:
Summary: Cassandra King shows a lot of promise as a writer
Review: But this book fell a bit short of what I think she's capable of doing at her best.

The plot involves a woman (Dean Lynch) unhappily married to a Methodist minister (Ben Lynch). As the story begins, Dean is alone and moving to a trailer in a small town on the Gulf Coast where nobody will think to look for her. Immediately after this scene, the book returns to an earlier time, when Dean and Ben are arriving at their new church in the panhandle of Florida. Ben is ambitious and not sure that his wife (who he keeps telling her came from a white trash background) is going to behave well enough for him to achieve his ambitions in the Methodist Church. Dean is quickly befriended by a top-of-the-social-ladder woman, Augusta Holderfield, who Ben is anxious to bring back to his church. But this woman is a bit impulsive and emotional, and Ben quickly begins to disapprove of her and fear her growing influence on Dean -- as well he ought. Through her friendship with the Holderfields, Dean begins to blossom and Ben does not approve. As events unfold, there is both tragedy and liberation for Dean.

This is a very well-written book with vivid characters and great dramatic scenes that beg to be made into a movie or serialized for television (with a high quality production). I think, however, that Ben is too resolutely awful -- no-one could be quite that bad, never varying into a decent moment. I think his character needed to display more complexity. The author also seems to blame the clergy when in fact there are systemic issues involved when clergy act badly -- having people want to put you on a pedastal is more than the fault of the person on the pedastal. It's a very complex problem, like a dysfunctional family.

I also think the book was a bit too long, and could have lost 30-50 pages -- there were whole descriptive paragraphs that did little to add to the story that could have been removed (like the antique napkins getting used to mop up spilled coffee by a one-scene-only character), and a tightened up story would have improved the overall novel.

Rating:
Summary: A good argument for the celibate clergy...
Review: I couldn't like this book, because I couldn't like one person in it! Every single person in it who has more than one line was completely self-centered, and I couldn't figure out half of their motivations for doing anything they did (for instance, why didn't Dean get to be friends with Collie, who certainly seemed nice). The big emotional climaxes left me flat. The description of the "church ladies" certainly was accurate, and if the author had stayed with that theme, it could have been a much better book. Oh, and given Rev. Lynch *something* to do besides pop in, be a self-centered sob and disappear again for awhile!

Rating:
Summary: A noble effort...
Review: I decided to read Cassandra King's The Sunday Wife for two reasons: King's husband is Pat Conroy (my favorite author), and The Post and Courier of Charleston, SC gave it a good review.

Willowdean "Dean" Lynch is the wife of a Methodist minister, who happens to be an ambitious and self-serving rising star in the church. Dean had a difficult childhood and ended up in foster care. She carries a number of scars from her childhood, the number one being low self-esteem. But one thing that enriches her life is her musical heritage and her musical talent.

She falls for a young, handsome preacher, Ben Lynch, and somehow "wins" this lucky prize. But what Dean quickly discovers is that it is not easy being the wife of a minister. Not only does she live in a fishbowl, but everyone (including Dean) is expected to orbit around her husband. She is expected to suppress all personal desires including the desire for a musical career and a family. The bulk of the story begins as Ben takes a job with a prestigious parish in the Florida panhandle. The adjustment isn't easy for Dean. But she becomes friends with the "rebel" Augusta, who slowly gets Dean to open her eyes to the fact that she is not living life on her own terms, and that she is certainly not meeting her potential. When a crisis occurs, Dean is finally faced with making difficult decisions about her life and her future.

The Sunday Wife appealed to me as the cast of characters found in this fictional parish can be found in almost any church. There were women that were jealous of Dean, women that were overly critical of her, and those who continuously and unashamedly flirted with her husband. There were control freaks, divas, gossips and those who feigned friendship for the wrong reasons. Many of them were superficial, holier-than-thou hypocrites. But there were one or two who truly cared about Dean and opened their hearts to her. King's first husband was also a minister, and we are left to wonder how much of this story is autobiographical.

The Sunday Wife isn't a Pat Conroy book by any means. But I did detect the hand of Conroy in some of the writing-especially in the last chapters. And while it's not the great literature we've come to expect from Conroy, it is a noble effort just the same, and King has much to share with her readers.


Rating:
Summary: This is a great read!!
Review: I love it when I find a book that I absolutely cannot put down and this one most certainly is that.
Miss King's characters are so real to me that I feel I know them personally...

Rating:
Summary: The Sunday Wife
Review: I thoroughly enjoyed this novel and had trouble putting it down. If you are looking for depth, read WAR AND PEACE. If, however, you are looking for a good read, I highly recommend this book. I'm surprised that it's taken me so long to "discover" this author, and had no idea she is married to Pat Conroy. I tripped over this book purely by accident. Now, I am looking for other books she's written.

Rating:
Summary: Predictable, cheesy and psuedo-political
Review: I was looking for an entertaining beach read, so did not have high, literary expectations - but even so this book was a big disappointment.

Filled with cliche dialogue, predictable plot line and mushy attempts to build quasi-feminists characters, I suffered through it because I had nothing else to read.



Rating:
Summary: Predictable
Review: I was very interested in reading THE SUNDAY WIFE for three major reasons: It is written by Pat Conroy's wife and I love Pat Conroy novels; I'm the daughter of a Methodist minister and was interested in how this played into the plot; I'm from Florida. Well, it turns out those were three pretty lousy reasons for reading a book. Oh, I read it. I guess primarily because it was kind of interesting to read the references to familiar things. The church ladies were certainly familiar. If Cassandra King isn't a minister's daughter or former minister's wife, she sure had an inside view to what goes on in the parsonage. The descriptions of Florida were good too. But the plot was predictable and overly complicated for something that just wasn't that difficult. It wasn't a bad story, but for my tastes it needed to be better edited. There were too many details about things that just didn't matter. I want to know what the people are thinking and feeling, not about how long the trip is between Sarasota and Crystal River. But we got both and sometimes not enough of the thinking and feeling. Ben Lynch, Dean's self-centered minister husband was so one-dimensional that there were times I wondered why he was even in this story.

Don't read this if you want good southern fiction. I'm sorry to say, it's not.

Rating:
Summary: Need a cozy read? Pick this one!!!
Review: Most novels, IMHO, are the same story told different ways. In THE SUNDAY WIFE, the reader is refreshened to a new story and a cast of characters very familiar but not.

Pastor Ben and his wife, Dean, move to a larger church and you are behind the scenes in this book rather than in the congregation! It shows an insight on what goes on with this Pastor and his wife - their seperate life together and their life in the church.

Ben's vision is a selfish one and his attitude towards his wife is appalling throughout the book. Dean becomes friends with Augusta who brings, IMHO, makes Dean stronger than she ever was before.

An amazing read - a powerful one and one that should be read and savored.

Rating:
Summary: really bad 'chick fiction'...........
Review: My book club read The Sunday Wife recently. It was considered a dud. We found we couldn't sympathize with, much less like, any of the characters. We also felt the plot was contrived. Also, Ms King didn't do her reseach well. In the early part of the book her characters are comparing which is the best way to drown ones sorrow; by using Zantac or Jack Daniel's. I think the author meant Xanax which is a prescription anti-anxiety medication, not Zantac which is an over-the-counter heartburn medicine. For shame....