Rogues' Wedding

by Terry Griggs

A man on the run, a woman in pursuit: Terry Griggs’s new novel is a wildly entertaining and inventive take on the war between the sexes, delicious to read, impossible to put down.

On his wedding night in 1898, Griffith Smolders, already unnerved by the conjugal duties that await him, is chased around his hotel room by ball lightning -- and he takes it as a sign that he is not ready to be a husband. Jumping out the window, he flees into the night, leaving behind his bride. When the immodest and beautiful Avice realizes she’s been abandoned, she swears she will exact a suitably nasty revenge.

Like Odysseus in reverse, Grif keeps on running -- away from home, from himself and most especially from Avice. And, of course, he runs into trouble. Trying to help a coquettish young woman, he inadvertently boards a ship about to sink. The sole survivor, he washes up near a lighthouse. When he finally runs out of steam, and holes up in a little hotel in a northern frontier town, he finds that another Griffith Smolders has mysteriously appeared.

Meanwhile, Avice sets out to hunt him. The lengths to which she goes in stalking her wayward husband reveal that she is definitely not a member of the weaker sex. And when, at last, she runs him to ground, the collision between the two is even more electric than the lightning that began it.

Genres: Book Club

304 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2002

Reviews

[Helen McClory]

Like a written version of a cartoon from the early days of the form, this book bumps and buzzes and is full of weird slightly macabre sights and people who are never real. A fast-paced and exhausting thing.

[Barbara Sibbald]

Fully earned magical realism in an innovative and inventive form. A bridegroom seemingly disappears on his wedding night, and not a moment too soon as it later turns out. Griggs knows how to spin a compelling tale: a real page-turner. And she's a very talented wordsmith.

A few excerpts:
"Occasionally, a husband might wander through the house like an animal and leave behind droppings -- cigar ash, mud on the rug, pittance to manage the household with-- and while there, beget a brood of offspring, the delivery of which would eventually kill his mate. Work and grief, that was what a woman really married." page 166

"He himself began to keep a daily journal, and in doing so discovered the pleasures of living doubly: once in the air and then again on paper, where experience can be rejigged, patched up, or shaken like a child's bank for its concealed treasures." p 284

[Carol · Rating 1 out of 5]

Just could not get into it.........

[Beverly · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was unlike most books I've ever read. I really had no idea where the story was heading or how - there was no sense of how the story might end. It was like following a leaf picked up by the wind as it flits here and there. The personalities of the two main characters were by no means predictable. The unpredictability of both the personalities and the story line made the book enjoyable to read because I was always left wondering what would happen next.