A Small Indiscretion

In this debut novel, Annie Black, married for two decades with three children, owns a quaint lighting shop in San Francisco for which she designs fashionable fixtures, and has hired a mysterious young woman who calls herself Emme. But someone sends Annie a photograph in the mail, taken during a wild year Annie spent in London many years ago, and so she returns there seeking to resolve old passions. The story opens with the news that Robbie, Annie's son, has been seriously injured in a car accident, and Emme, who was driving the car, has disappeared. The author then embarks on an overly coincidental story that strains the reader's suspension of disbelief. The book takes the form of a letter written by Annie to Robbie, although we don't know where Robbie is, or whether he's alive. Annie recounts that it was the year she turned 20%E2%80%94the year of Robbie's conception%E2%80%94when she went to work for Malcolm Church, an older man in London with whom she had an affair. Annie also confesses to a passionate involvement with Malcolm's wife's lover, a handsome photographer named Patrick Ardghal, with whom Annie became obsessed, and finally how at the end of this sojourn she met Robbie's father, Jonathan. The book travels back and forth between Annie's memories of that year and the horrific present, in which, after the impulsive trip back to the U.K., her marriage is disintegrating and Robbie's life hangs in the balance. The book is a page-turner but the crazy connections are too orchestrated to be believable, and the epistolary format doesn't fit. Would a mother really tell her son all the sordid details of her sexual past, even if it did reveal something about his patrimony? (Jan.)