Posted:
by Joanna Scott
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, US$26.00
Published Sept. 2, 2014
What we think:
Tour guide extraordinaire Armand de Potter’s sudden disappearance at the outset of Joanna Scott's new novel is a mystery wrapped inside of an enigma. Though his loving wife, Aimée de Potter, chooses to accept that he was lost at sea and forges forward, she can’t prevent doubts about his fate from drifting through her mind -- especially as she grows more doubtful about who he really was, and whether she ever truly knew the man she was married to for decades.
The novel flits back and forth between Armand’s disappearance at the age of 53 and the evolution of his life with Aimée -- their burgeoning tour business, their well-appointed lifestyle, their long-awaited child, and, through it all, their steady and lively affection for each other. Though inconsistencies and cracks in Armand's history reveal themselves nearly from the start, Aimée brushes away any concerns about her husband, recording in her diary instead the quotidian sights, gifts and treats of their pleasure-filled life.
Even when he vanishes from a steamer under strange circumstances, Aimée’s investigations serve more to enlighten the reader than the bereaved wife, who seems to choose to remember her husband as he would have wished to be remembered.
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Farrar, Straus and Giroux, US$26.00
Published Sept. 2, 2014
Tour guide extraordinaire Armand de Potter’s sudden disappearance at the outset of Joanna Scott's new novel is a mystery wrapped inside of an enigma. Though his loving wife, Aimée de Potter, chooses to accept that he was lost at sea and forges forward, she can’t prevent doubts about his fate from drifting through her mind -- especially as she grows more doubtful about who he really was, and whether she ever truly knew the man she was married to for decades.
The novel flits back and forth between Armand’s disappearance at the age of 53 and the evolution of his life with Aimée -- their burgeoning tour business, their well-appointed lifestyle, their long-awaited child, and, through it all, their steady and lively affection for each other. Though inconsistencies and cracks in Armand's history reveal themselves nearly from the start, Aimée brushes away any concerns about her husband, recording in her diary instead the quotidian sights, gifts and treats of their pleasure-filled life.
Even when he vanishes from a steamer under strange circumstances, Aimée’s investigations serve more to enlighten the reader than the bereaved wife, who seems to choose to remember her husband as he would have wished to be remembered.
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