by Sigrid Nunez
First published 1997
Nona lives in New York at forty, trapped in endless self-analysis. She has a solid marriage but throws it away for an affair that disappoints her. The relationship crumbles, leaving her to examine where everything went wrong. She cannot stop thinking about herself and her choices. Her mind circles through past mistakes and present troubles. She watches the people in her life through the lens of her own dissatisfaction. The affair promised something better but delivered something worse. Now she faces the wreckage of what she had and what she wanted. Her thoughts become a prison of regret and second-guessing. The decent life she abandoned haunts her as she tries to understand her own destructive impulses.
Genres: literary-fiction, contemporary, adult-fiction, 21st-century
Vibes: intimate, introspective, thought-provoking
Tropes: character-study, unreliable-narrator
Setting: New York
Period: 21st-century
239 pages · Paperback · Anthos