I didn’t enjoy Erin Somers’s The Ten Year Affair, so the fact her blurb was front and center on Sophie Mackintosh’s novel about an affair caused a momentary pause; however, Permanence (Avid Reader Press) did not suffer from the same “meh” that made me indifferent to the Somers’s novel. It’s an intimate portrayal of an affair having its shine worn off in real time with at least one character you are immediately invested in.
Clara and Francis are having an affair. The novel opens with them awakening in what appears to be a hotel room, but they quickly realize they’re in a dreamlike place equipped with all their favorite things and where everything is sunshine and roses. The relationship that Clara has been forced to hide is suddenly permitted to be in the open. It’s never permanent – if they hurt the other (physically or emotionally), they’ll wake up in the “real world” where Francis is a husband and father and Clara is heartbroken to be in love with a man she can’t have. If they miss each other enough, they’ll wake up together in the seemingly perfect city while a pause is hit on their real lives. They continue in this limbo, with each return to the real world lasting a bit longer as their perfect city and relationship loses their allure.
SPOILER TO COME
Francis is horrible. He is having a midlife crisis, and he is far from likable. His pursuit of the younger Clara, his insistence on making sure there is no evidence of their affair anywhere, the way he leaves her to her own devices during an abortion that he wanted her to have, the way he treats his wife and even his daughter – he is remarkably predictable and unlikeable. I don’t think we’re meant to hate him, but he seems a bit of a caricature. But Clara… Clara is so likeable, so perfectly imperfect. All she wants is something permanent.
The writing is beautiful, the relationship so artfully depicted, and Clara so fully formed. I’d recommend this one.
A Girl Named Tommi 