';A literary theft, a death and the sparking of desire make for a tumultuous year in the lives of four New Yorkers…[a] polished, affecting novel.' People Adam Weller is a moderately successful novelist, past his primebut squiring around a much younger woman and still longing for greater fame and glory. His former wife, Eleanor, is unhappily playing the role of the overweight, discarded woman. Their daughter, Maud, has just begun a frankly sexual affair with an Arab American man that unexpectedly becomes life-changing. Into each of these lives the past intrudes in a way that will test them to their core. Navigating nimbly between sharp humor and deeply felt emotion, the award-winning author of Florence Gordon tells a story of love, friendship, literary treachery, and what each of us owes to the past. ';Inside [Morton's] broad comedy of manners is a heartfelt novel about the redemptive power of suffering.' The New Yorker ';Morton is the rare writer equally invested in people and ideas…. [He] creates some of the most complex and real female characters of any writer.' San Francisco Chronicle
