ibeforem
Joe sadly leaves Tess behind and moves to be with his father near his mother in prison. Life falls into another uneasy rhythm of work and visiting his mother, until Tess reappears. It seems that maybe life can be happy again, even as Tess becomes enamored of his mother and her crime and begins to make some plans of her own.
The story moves back and forth between Joe's past, living with Tess, and Joe's present, where Tess has disappeared from his life. We don't know why she's gone, only that she is. Joe is struggling, both with her absence and his continued mental illness. I think Maksik does a good job of portraying his illness through the writing, swinging from mania to a deep depression. It's not unusual to wonder if he's just going to take his own life.
The book takes it's time getting to the the crux -- what Tess's plan is and how it affects their lives -- but I didn't find it to be unpleasant. I also that the underlying source of Tess's rage, the mistreatment of woman, is a subject that is coincidentally more timely now than it was in the nineties (the early part of the timeline) or 2016 (when this was published).
Overall, I think this was a good read but you have to be patient with it. It meanders a lot and the ending may be considered unsatisfactory to some, but I think it was worth the journey.