Winner of the 2020 Georgia Author of the Year Award!
One of Booklist's Top 10 Books of the Year!
A provocative and timely new novel by the author of Inheriting Edith, one that will haunt you long after the final page is turned…
Sylvie Snow knows the pressures of expectations: a woman is supposed to work hard, but never be tired; age gracefully, but always be beautiful; fix the family problems, but always be carefree. Sylvie does the grocery shopping, the laundry, the scheduling, the schlepping and the PTA-ing, while planning her son’s Bar Mitzvah and cheerfully tending her husband, Paul, who’s been lying on the sofa with a broken ankle. She’s also secretly addicted to the Oxycontin intended for her husband.
For three years, Sylvie has repressed her grief about the heartbreaking stillbirth of her newborn daughter, Delilah. On the morning of the anniversary of her death, when she just can’t face doing one…more…thing: she takes one—just one—of her husband’s discarded pain pills. And suddenly she feels patient, kinder, and miraculously relaxed. She tells herself that the pills are temporary, just a gift, and that when the supply runs out she’ll go back to her regularly scheduled programming.
But days turn into weeks, and Sylvie slips slowly into a nightmare. At first, Paul and Teddy are completely unaware, but this changes quickly as her desperate choices reveal her desperate state. As the Bar Mitzvah nears, all three of them must face the void within themselves, both alone and together.
- ISBN10 0062838237
- ISBN13 9780062838230
- Publish Date 31 October 2019 (first published 24 September 2019)
- Publish Status Active
- Out of Print 5 April 2024
- Publish Country US
- Publisher HarperCollins Publishers Inc
- Imprint William Morrow Paperbacks
- Format Paperback
- Pages 416
- Language English