Oven House

...she feels raw, like burnt skin, like nails broken below the quick, the breath in her throat as sharp as razors, though she has no right to feel any of this, as she is the one burning and breaking and cutting up the life they have shared for ten years. She's married, still in love with her husband, and absorbed in running her own second-hand bookshop. Then she notices the man standing behind her in the coffee shop, the book in his hands. How is it possible to feel so happy in the company of someone she's just met? And why should that happiness feel so illicit? obsession and excitement erode our connections with reality, what it feels like to experience too much heat, too suddenly, with no time for reason or reflection....now that she knows how much he wants her, she feels dangerous, a woman she hasn't ever been before. She wants to slip her leg over his, lean forward and run her lips over his ear, slide her hand along the crease in his trousers where his thigh meets his groin. Should we take the risk and become someone we never thought we could be? Can there be an economy of love? And can we insulate ourselves from life's surprises and sadness? Erotic and painfully perceptive in its portrayal of the workings of guilt, The Oven House reveals the selfishness and grief, as well as the tenderness, that accompany love.