by David Means
First published 1991
In Spain, an American husband and wife find their attention drawn to a beautiful adolescent. The fascination becomes another wedge in their already fracturing relationship. The foreign setting amplifies their distance from each other as attraction and obsession pull them further apart. Meanwhile, in another story, a young man grapples with revelations about his dead uncle's hidden sexual identity. These interconnected tales explore how desire and family secrets reshape our understanding of those closest to us. Means examines the moments when marriages dissolve and when the truth about relatives forces us to reconsider everything we thought we knew. The stories move between the dissolution of romantic bonds and the discovery of concealed lives, showing how both experiences leave characters searching for solid ground in relationships that have shifted beneath their feet.
Genres: literary-fiction, contemporary, 21st-century, contemporary-romance, family-drama
Vibes: emotional-atmospheric, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: enemies-to-lovers, unreliable-narrator
Setting: Spain
Period: 21st-century
192 pages · Hardcover · William Morrow & Co
Content warnings: sexual-content