Adam Weller is a moderately successful novelist, past his prime, but 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 that unexpectedly becomes life-changing. Into each of these lives the past intrudes in a way that will test them to their core. With perfect pitch and a rare empathy, Brian Morton is equally adept at portraying the life of the mind and how it plays out in the world, brilliantly tracing the border between honor and violation. Here Morton tells his strongest story yet-a story about 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
"A literary theft, a death and the sparking of desire make for a tumultuous year in the lives of four New Yorkers fumbling toward belated self-discovery... In this polished, affecting novel, their stories intertwine and uplift: As Maud, the book's tender heart, reflects, striving is 'the law of life."
