SOURCE: Mesic, Penelope. “An American Nightmare: It's Not Pretty in Robert Coover's Anywhere, USA.” Chicago Tribune Books (30 June 1996): 3.

In the following review of John's Wife, Mesic praises Coover's prose style, but finds shortcomings in the novel's exaggerated depravity and sprawling cast of characters.

John's Wife, the latest novel by Robert Coover, may appear to be set in a nameless, contemporary small town—Anywhere, USA, with its summer barbecues and high school football, its car dealership and photo shop, and its air of bustling boosterism—but be warned. A closer look at the townspeople—sheriff, golf pro, whore, preacher, scheming land developer, housewife—reveals that these ostensibly dull citizens bear a disconcerting resemblance to the grotesques of Hieronymus Bosch.

It's a population lewd, vice-ridden, cruel and blinded by folly. Wonders and monstrosities litter the landscape, some of a crudeness that seems borrowed from Rabelais. The much-abused daughter of a...