If You Left - Softcover

Norton, Ashley Prentice

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0544263685 ISBN 13: 9780544263680

Publisher: Harper Perennial, 2016

Synopsis

A seductive novel about a privileged but damaged Manhattan wife whose main source of stability — her marriage — comes under threat, from forces both without and within.

For most of their marriage, Althea has fluctuated between extreme depressive and manic states — what she calls “the Tombs” and “the Visions” — and Oliver has been the steady hand that guided her to safety. This summer, Althea decides that she will be different from here on. She will be the loving, sexy wife Oliver wants, and the reliable, affectionate mother their nine year-old daughter Clem deserves. Her plan: to bring Clem to their Easthampton home once school is out — with no “summer girl” to care for her this time — and become “normal.”

But Oliver is distant and controlling, and his relationship with their interior decorator seems a bit too close; Clem has learned to be self-sufficient, and getting to know her now feels like very hard work for Althea. Into this scene enters the much younger, David Foster Wallace–reading house painter, who reaches something in Althea that has been long buried.

Fearless, darkly funny, and compulsively readable, If You Left explores the complex dance that is the bipolar marriage, and the possibility that to move forward, we might have to destroy the very things we've worked hardest to build.
 

About this title

From the Back Cover

 
All relationships have their ups and downs. For Althea and Oliver Willow, the ups and downs are a bit . . . extreme.
 
Welcome to the bipolar marriage.
 
For most of their union, Althea has fluctuated between depressive and manic states — what she calls the Tombs and the Visions — and Oliver has been the steady hand. This summer, Althea decides that she will be different. She’ll bring their nine-year-old daughter, Clem, to their Easthampton home once school is out — with no “summer girl” to care for her this time — and become the loving, sexy wife Oliver wants, and the reliable, affectionate mother Clem deserves. But Oliver is distant and controlling, and Clem has learned to be self-sufficient, and getting to know her now feels like very hard work. Into this scene enters the much younger, David Foster Wallace–reading house painter, who reaches something in Althea that has been long buried.
 
Praise for the work of Ashley Prentice Norton
 
“Gripping, vivid, and moving.” — Isabel Gillies
 
“A truly gifted new voice in fiction.” — Jill Kargman
 
“Darkly funny, compulsively readable.”—People
 
ASHLEY PRENTICE NORTON is the author of the critically acclaimed debut novel The Chocolate Money, and a graduate of Exeter, Georgetown, and the creative writing program at New York University. She lives in New York with her husband and three children.

About the Author

ASHLEY PRENTICE NORTON is a graduate of Exeter, Georgetown, and the Creative Writing Program at New York University. Her critically acclaimed first novel, The Chocolate Money, was heralded as "darkly funny . . . compulsively readable" by People. She has also written If You Left, which mirrors the same dark humor. She lives in New York with her husband and three children.

Edition details

• Publisher: Harper Perennial
• Publication date: 2016
• ISBN 10: 0544263685
• ISBN 13: 9780544263680
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 256