Dirty Love

Dirty LoveIn these linked novellas in which characters walk out the back door of one story and into the next, love is "dirty" tangled up with need, power, boredom, ego, fear, and fantasy. On the Massachusetts coast north of Boston, a controlling manager, Mark, discovers his wife's infidelity after twenty five years of marriage. An overweight young woman, Marla, gains a romantic partner but loses her innocence. A philandering bartender aspiring poet, Robert,

In these linked novellas in which characters walk out the back door of one story and into the next, love is "dirty"--tangled up with need, power, boredom, ego, fear, and fantasy. On the Massachusetts coast north of Boston, a controlling manager, Mark, discovers his wife's infidelity after twenty-five years of marriage. An overweight young woman, Marla, gains a romantic partner but loses her innocence. A philandering bartender/aspiring poet, Robert, betrays his pregnant wife. And in the stunning title novella, a teenage girl named Devon, fleeing a dirty image of her posted online, seeks respect in the eyes of her widowed great-uncle Francis and of an Iraq vet she's met surfing the Web.

Slivered by happiness and discontent, aging and death, but also persistent hope and forgiveness, these beautifully wrought narratives express extraordinary tenderness toward human beings, our vulnerable hearts and bodies, our fulfilling and unfulfilling lives alone and with others.

Binding Type: Paperback
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Published: 06/10/2014
ISBN: 9780393348910
Pages: 292
Weight: 0.57lbs
Size: 8.49h x 5.50w x 0.81d

Review Citations: New York Times Book Review 07/20/2014 pg. 32