Bookworm
Michelle Huneven: Off Course
Love can become a false Eden. Michelle Huneven's protagonist retreats to the Sierras to write her dissertation but upon accepting a lover begins to dwell in their affair.
By Michael Silverblatt • • 28m ListenIn Michelle Huneven's engaging novel Off Course (Farrar, Strauss and Giroux), Cress retreats to her parents' A-frame in the Sierras, a place she loathed as a child, to write her dissertation on art-world economics. Huneven plants seeds of foreboding into the novel from Cress' initial ascent up into the redwoods. She soon accepts the advances of a lover and begins to dwell in an erotic fairy tale. We discuss how love can become a false Eden and, love having turned to suffering, Cress returns to confront life as an adult alone.
Read an excerpt from Off Course.
