Only Delia’s long-suffering husband Henry knows how demanding she can be: She needs a sofa for her office. While Jane is stepping and fetching for her husband in her off hours-prescriptions for pain killers, packs of ice, heating pads, more pillows-her day job as administrator is transformed by the arrival of Delia Delaney, renowned writer and unrepentant id-on-wheels. Their home life becomes a hellish stand-off between need and resentment. Told in alternating chapters from the perspective of husband and wife, the novel charts the disintegration of their marriage, which initially begins to fray when a minor injury on a volleyball court-Alan admits he was showing off for the younger faculty-segues into chronic back pain. He is a 51-year-old professor of architecture and expert on Victorian-era follies (the faux ruins of stone towers and hermitages Britain’s landed gentry built to enhance their estates) she, 11 years younger, is a quietly in-charge college bureaucrat who runs a program for visiting scholars. Jane and Alan Mackenzie are a model couple.
A once-happy marriage jumps the tracks when a charismatic writer accepts a fellowship at the small college in upstate New York where both husband and wife work.
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