Fifteen years ago, Susan Morrow left her first husband Edward Sheffield. One day
, comfortable in her home, and her second marriage, she receives, entirely out o
f the blue, a parcel containing the manuscript of her ex-husband's first novel.
He writes asking her to read the book; she was always his best critic, he says.
As Susan reads, she is drawn into the fictional life of his character Tony Ha
stings, a maths professor driving his family to their summer house in Maine. And
as we read with her, so are we. As the Hastings' ordinary, civilized lives are
disastrously, violently sent off course, Susan is plunged back into the past, fo
rced to confront the darkness that inhabits her, and driven to name the fear tha
t gnaws at her future and will change her life.
Tony and Susan is a dazzling
achievement: simultaneously a riveting portrayal of the experience of reading an
d a page-turning thriller, written in startlingly arresting prose. It is also a
novel about fear and regret, revenge and aging, marriage and creativity. It is s
imply unique.
