Booklist

Booklist
(September 15, 2007; 0-312-36965-4; 978-0-312-36965-1)

If only it were as difficult to fall in love as it is to fall out of it, then perhaps the bitter recriminations and personal vendettas that often lead to devastating divorce would never occur. In the case of Claire and Tobin, the halcyon days of their courtship naturally resulted in a storybook marriage that would take them from Europe to America, produce two beautiful children, launch satisfying careers, and establish them in a home of their own. Then one day Tobin walked out, and though the clues were there all along the petty bickering, the selfish demands Claire was genuinely shocked to learn that the love of her life didn't love her after all. Her emotional anguish is total, debilitating, heart wrenching to behold, and Royal limns the raw depths of Claire's suffering with both disarming candor and delicate subtlety. Poignant, painful, lyrical, Royal's treatment of this lamentably common condition is astonishingly uncommon in the sheer force of its sympathetic honesty.--Haggas, Carol Copyright 2007 Booklist