Chapter Five
CHAPTER FIVE COMMUNITY WAS HELD IN A LONG ROOM with tall barred windows that overlooked a redbrick wall. The smell of coffee was in the air, mingled with traces of Yuri’s aftershave. About thirty people were sitting in a circle. Most were clutching paper cups of tea or coffee, yawning and doing their best to […]
Chapter Four
CHAPTER FOUR I ARRIVED AT THE GROVE pursued by an icy January wind. The bare trees stood like skeletons along the road. The sky was white, heavy with snow that had yet to fall. I stood outside the entrance and reached for my cigarettes in my pocket. I hadn’t smoked in over a week—I’d promised […]
Chapter Three
CHAPTER THREE MY NAME IS THEO FABER. I’m forty-two years old. And I became a psychotherapist because I was fucked-up. That’s the truth—though it’s not what I said during the job interview, when the question was put to me. “What drew you to psychotherapy, do you think?” asked Indira Sharma, peering at me over the […]
Chapter Two
CHAPTER TWO ALCESTIS IS THE HEROINE OF A GREEK MYTH. A love story of the saddest kind. Alcestis willingly sacrifices her life for that of her husband, Admetus, dying in his place when no one else will. An unsettling myth of self-sacrifice, it was unclear how it related to Alicia’s situation. The true meaning of […]
Chapter One
CHAPTER ONE ALICIA BERENSON WAS THIRTY-THREE YEARS OLD when she killed her husband. They had been married for seven years. They were both artists—Alicia was a painter, and Gabriel was a well-known fashion photographer. He had a distinctive style, shooting semi-starved, semi-naked women in strange, unflattering angles. Since his death, the price of his photographs […]
Prologue
PROLOGUE Alicia Berenson’s Diary JULY 14 I don’t know why I’m writing this. That’s not true. Maybe I do know and just don’t want to admit it to myself I don’t even know what to call it—this thing I’m writing. It feels a little pretentious to call it a diary. It’s not like I have […]
Acknowledgments
Acknowledgments I am indebted to the American Academy in Rome, to the Idaho Commission on the Arts, and to the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. Thank you to Francis Geffard, who brought me to Saint-Malo for the first time. Thank you to Binky Urban and Clare Reihill for their enthusiasm and confidence. And thanks especially […]
Chapter no 178
She lives to see the century turn. She lives still. It’s a Saturday morning in early March, and her grandson Michel collects her from her flat and walks her through the Jardin des Plantes. Frost glimmers in the air, and Marie-Laure shuffles along with the ball of her cane out in front and her thin […]
Chapter no 177
Frederick He lives with his mother outside west Berlin. Their apartment is a middle unit in a triplex. Its only windows offer a view of sweet-gum trees, a vast and barely used supermarket parking lot, and an expressway beyond. Frederick sits on the back patio most days and watches the wind drive discarded plastic bags […]
Chapter no 176
Sea of Flames From the molten basements of the world, two hundred miles down, it comes. One crystal in a seam of others. Pure carbon, each atom linked to four equidistant neighbors, perfectly knit, octahedral, unsurpassed in hardness. Already it is old: unfathomably so. Incalculable eons tumble past. The earth shifts, shrugs, stretches. One year, […]