In Love

A cynical love letter to an affair gone awry against the backdrop of 1950s New York, "a ruthlessly observant novel with heart-stoppingly good sentences" (Slate)

New York in the 1950s. A man on a barstool is telling a story about a woman he met in a bar, early married and soon divorced, her child farmed out to her parents, good-looking, if a little past her prime. They'd gone out, they'd grown close, but as far as he was concerned it didn't add up to much. He was a busy man.

Then one day, out dancing, she runs into a rich awkward lovelorn businessman. He'll pay for her to be his, pay her a lot. And now the narrator discovers that he is as much in love with her as she is with him, perhaps more, though it will take him a while to realize just how utterly lost he is.

Executed with the cool smoky brilliance of a classic Miles Davis track, In Love is an unequaled exploration of the tethered--and untethered--heart.