The Candidate's Wife - Softcover

O'Brien, Patricia

3.07

42 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0312950217 ISBN 13: 9780312950217

Publisher: St Martins Pr, 1993

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Kate Goodspeed has sacrificed much to assist her husband Luke in his political career, but when Luke decides to make a run for the White House, an explosive secret she has been hiding could destroy his presidential aspirations, and their marriage. Reprint.

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From Kirkus Reviews:

Here's exactly the first novel you might expect from a reporter who covered Gary Hart and Geraldine Ferraro on the campaign trail and in her spare time wrote a nonfiction book called Staying Together: Marriages That Work (1976). Put those two elements together and you've got this story of an intolerably put- upon presidential candidate's wife who ends up humming a very familiar tune: ``Stand By Your Man.'' Kate Goodspeed is 45 when her husband, Luke, wins the top spot on the Democratic ticket, an event that leaves her ``flat-out dazzled,'' but still troubled on some deeper level over the fact that Luke's hotshot election advisor, Claire Lorenzo, insists she wear her blue linen instead of her favorite yellow frock at the victory bash. Clearly, Kate's compromising herself to get into the Oval Office (where, we're informed, ``a hell of a lot of history had taken place''). But it gets harder and harder to compromise when: her 15-year-old daughter gets pregnant and must have a secret abortion (Luke's too namby-pamby to take a firm position on the volatile issue); her adolescent son grows hostile; and, last but not least, Kate finds out that Luke's been spending his nights on the road with Claire. But Kate's too tough a cookie to crumble, so in order to keep her daughter's abortion out of the press, she admits that she had one herself 20 years ago--an act of such gutsiness that it wins her a Newsweek cover, the confidence to pull her husband's leash, and First Ladyhood. It's all very topical, of course, which is fun. But Kate comes up short as a character: it's hard to figure out why anyone would put up with so much baloney for a chance to repaper the White House walls. -- Copyright �1991, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

From Library Journal:

In her first novel O'Brien, a Washington, D.C. journalist and former press secretary in Michael Dukakis's presidential campaign, offers an insider's look at a candidate running for president. She reaches for the story behind the story, however, focusing on the candidate's wife, Kate Goodspeed. The grueling campaign dissects Kate and her family, exposing raw individuals who react and relate to each other in new, and disturbing, ways; Kate questions whether she and her husband still share the same dream. She recognizes that the casualties of her husband's campaign may be her daughter, her son, and her marriage, as old well-hidden secrets threaten to leak out and new ones emerge. Her confrontations with new and old demons takes her into self-analysis that is intimately detailed though lacking a final punch that would make her an authentic heroine; her personal reemergence is a disappointing anticlimax. Though the dialog is strained by overuse of jargon, this is nevertheless both readable and timely, particularly with the approach of the 1992 presidential election. BOMC alternate.
- M.J. Hethcoat, San Francisco
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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