Ronnie, an engaged hairdresser with a history of teenage recklessness and mystery childhood illnesses, feels stifled by the unavoidable pull of the predictable, comfortable life laid out before her. Charlie, an anxiety-ridden, award-winning writer, feels suffocated by his literary success and familial responsibility, including a bread-winning wife and a child with autism. When the unlikely pair meet at a holiday party where Ronnie's fiancé is the caterer, a torrid affair, which begins on office desks and in Toronto hotel rooms, provides both with a false reality that offers solace in its secrets. Charlie becomes obsessed with the calm of Ronnie's ordinariness, and Ronnie revels in the clandestine secrets and dramatic interludes of an otherwise predictable life. The two live in film scripts and prose, until the entire lie combusts in all its tragic beauty. Beautifully written and engaging, this novel calls into question society's strict definition of right versus wrong while examining what it means to be a husband, wife, parent, and human being.
