First published 2013
A mother watches her marriage dissolve in a small New England village. She lives with her husband and their two children, but her mind refuses to stay in the present moment. Time moves strangely around her. Past conversations bleed into current arguments. Future fears invade today's mundane tasks. Her husband feels equally trapped in their domestic life, his thoughts also drifting between what was, what is, and what might come. Both parents struggle to make sense of their linear days when their inner lives move in circles. The children exist in this fractured household where love and pain intertwine. The mother tries to understand how their relationship began, where it stands now, and where it leads. She questions whether beginnings, middles, and endings really exist or if everything happens at once. The family's story unfolds through shifting perspectives and fragmented time, revealing how consciousness works when a marriage falls apart.
Genres: literary-fiction, domestic-fiction, contemporary, family-drama
Vibes: emotional, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: fragmented-timeline, unreliable-narrator
Setting: New England
Period: 21st-century
182 pages · Hardcover · Farrar, Straus and Giroux