THE HONEY WALL

In a debut novel more notable for its detailed exploration of the complexities of love than its plot, storyteller Latuchie interweaves two narratives of infidelity and desire. Nina, a mechanic turned maker of Rube Goldbergesque "contraptions," and Tony, a painter, have been together for 20 tumultuous years in a relationship fraught with passion and plagued by affairs. At their Pennsylvania cottage, she reflects on her past as Bill, an elderly neighbor, tells Nina his own tale: years ago, he slept with his brother's French wife, was exiled from the area, worked on an oil rig in Saudi Arabia, returned for his father's funeral and lusted after his niece. Bill's story proves more riveting than poor Nina's, despite her secret pregnancies and abortions and her conflicted feelings for her flirtatious lover. Through elegant flashbacks, Latuchie recounts Nina and Tony's move from New York City to Vermont, where Tony landed a teaching job. Nina hates to leave the city but "she could almost believe that the power of their attraction to each other, the brashness of it, the intense pleasures in satisfying it, could be sufficiently strong glue to keep them together if everything else failed." The glue sticks, but as the years pass Nina and Tony repeatedly reenact painful patterns, wearying for readers and characters alike. As Nina's friend, Chris finally snaps: "I don't have time to fret the minutiae of my inner life…. Maybe you should try it." But if Nina's fretting grows old, her relationship with Bill intrigues: "his past offered in exchange for her mesmerized attention to the present." Agent, Sarah Burnes. (Apr.)