As Offill explained in a recent interview: “The white spaces in the novel are meant to be resting places for the reader, stop-offs before the wife wheels off in another direction. In this slim, beautiful work, the short paragraphs read as a series of carefully crafted vignettes, linked yet strong enough to stand alone. As the story moves on, and as events shape her outlook, the authorial distance changes – moving from “I” to “the wife” (during the difficult years) to “we” – a hopeful touch at the end. We see everything from the point of view of our narrator – a woman who makes notes about “POV” in the margins of her students’ essays ( “Think about authorial distance! Who is speaking here?”). The novel is framed around the elements that define one marriage: a couple, a child, adultery, betrayal, hurt and the beginning of forgiveness. It’s not a happy situation: “After you left for work, I would stare at the door as if it might open again.” Early in the story, our narrator (a writer and teacher) is at home with her colicky baby daughter.
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