Did you ever notice that some days you wake up thinking you're going to have a perfectly normal day and that everything will be smooth, only to find that your life gets weirder and weirder as the day progresses? At first, it's annoying, but then you have to laugh at the absurdity of it all. Fortunately for most of us, days like that come and go, but in "My Wife and My Dead Wife" by Michael Kun (c. 2004, MacAdam / Cage), those kinds of days last for weeks.
Hamilton "Ham" Ashe works as a tailor in a small Atlanta shop. Ham became a tailor because the ad in the paper said "sailor" and he thought it might be a great adventure. Being a tailor is an okay job, but Ham's boss, Palmeyer, drives him crazy. Palmeyer barely speaks to Ham, and when he does, he insists on calling him "Salami", which was funny at first, but isn't any more. The tailor shop needs another employee, but Palmeyer won't consider anybody who doesn't know Big Band music, and the work is piling up. When Palmeyer finally hires Debbie, Ham thinks this might be good, until it turns out that Debbie is a shrew and Palmeyer is decidedly smitten with her.
Ham lives with his girlfriend, Renee, who used to work at the hospital gift store until she lost her job. Now Renee wants to be a country & western singer, so she drains their bank account to buy guitar lessons, tape recorders, and microphones. Problem is, she's a horrible song-writer. She wrote a song about a dog with one ear, and she thinks that this will make her famous. Ham loves Renee, but she drives him crazy. She always mispronounces his name with her southern accent. She talks in letters and numbers (When he asks what's for dinner, she says "A) hot dogs, B) coleslaw, C) potatoes, and D) lemonade."). What's worse is that Renee is running all over town, telling everybody that she's Ham's wife. And Renee is definitely NOT Ham's wife.
The first few pages of "My Wife and My Dead Wife" are going to have you laughing. Author Michael Kun has created a Sad-Sack of a character in Hamilton Ashe; life never goes the way Ham thinks it should, and nobody ever listens to a thing he says. At about the middle of this book, the story turns rather sad and pathetic. While there are still some laugh-out-loud funny parts, you start to feel really bad for the character and what happens to him. The ending of this book has a couple of surprising twists that I never saw coming; one was a bit disappointing. The other was so totally unexpected that I had to read it twice.
If you're looking for A) a quirky story, B) a few laughs followed by a couple of bombshells, or C) a great vacation read, grab a copy of this book.
Vail Trail, June 17, 2004.
In his last outing (The Locklear Letters, 2003), Kun seemed to have an unerring eye for those lost men of the world who pine away for their perfect fantasy women. In this sharper and edgier riff on a similar type, he takes us into the world of Hamilton "Ham" Ashe. Hailing from a small Georgia town, Ham now works as a tailor in Atlanta (having a little boating knowledge, he answered a misspelled ad looking for a "sailor" but got hired anyway), while his live-in girlfriend, Renee, who recently lost her job at a hospital, does nothing.
The bulk of the story is a nonstop rant by Ham against Renee and the horrors she inflicts upon him, mostly of the monetary variety. Deciding that she doesn't want to go back to work, Renee announces her desire to become a country-and-western singer, necessitating the purchase of a guitar, guitar lessons, and some really awful outfits to accompany her horrible songs. Ham takes it all in silent resentment, occasionally flashing back to memories of his ex-wife Shellie, who hailed from the same small town as he. Other memories, of a kid from Ham's high school who was brutally murdered, also come floating back to prove a crucial development in the story (it's not what readers might think-this doesn't turn into a crime novel-but it's shocking nonetheless).
For a time, Ham's rantings are amusing as Renee goes from one ridiculous type of selfish behavior to another, but as we see more of Ham's dead-end life, the more sympathetic she becomes. Things at first seem suffused with the sour taste of misogyny, like a standup comic going on endlessly about his crazy girlfriend, but ultimately Kun proves an abler writer than that.
An endearing, bittersweet romance that reads like a comedy.
Kirkus Reviews