 heading out to wonderful by robert goolrick this novel has left me feeling quite conflicted set in the small town of brownsburg virginia the story begins in a slow dreamy pace which matches the peaceful uneventful life of the townsfolk it s postwar america and the country is blooming with wealth progress and energy but life in brownsburg floats by as always ladies attend church in their smart hats and dazzling white gloves shopkeepers know your name and always smile every day is happily the same fading into warm lazy evenings on the porch and of course noone locks their door at night into this smalltown paradise enters a stranger charlie beale the residents are politely wary of him but he charms them gets a job buys some land and settles into a home of his own all is far too relaxed and warm and fuzzy is anything going to jolt us out of this idyll then we remember the opening pages of the book where the narrator sam warns us he has a story to tell a story which people say must have left him damaged what could possibly enter into this serene sleepy town to inflict damage  lust charlie beale develops an infatuation with sylvan she is married to the arrogant hideous and filthyrich boaty glass it is a loveless union and she is all too ready for the thrill of taking a lover once the affair begins the novel crackles to life until then it had threatened to become a repetition of chocolatebox scenes from smalltown life the story stumbles upon lust lies intrigue and abuse and the readers surely revel in it with a sense of gratitude however the sudden introduction of this fierce affair and its consequences does make the novel rather lopsided there is the feeling that the author spends too long in setting the scene and is then forced to cram all the action into the latter half of the novel there is also a narrative inconsistency the story is told by sam who witnessed most of the events as a child he is telling the story now as an adult however he ventures to tell us how sylvan felt about the affair but he can t possibly have known he was only a sixyear old at the time and can have had no insight into sylvan s emotions and she certainly didn t confide in a child so the passages where sam tells us precisely how sylvan and charlie felt are frustrating sam tells us that charlie hoped so secretly that he couldn t even say it to himself or even write it in his diary well how can sam know it then he awards himself a narrative omnsiscienece yet at other times he says things like you may wonder why and i m telling you i don t know this inconsistency was jarring and frustrating sometime he claims to know the innermost thoughts of these adults and at other times he throws up his hands and reminds us he was only six and can t possibly have known what was going on if you can overlook the glitches in the narration then this is an entertaining read and evokes very well the cosiness and claustrophobia of smalltown life heading out to wonderful is published by hutchinson book review robert goolrick archive g 