Stories spiral within stories in this meandering, loose-ended tale of lost love by Renek (Spiritland
). Carolyn, the 42-year-old narrator, addresses in second-person her longtime lover, a cultural critic of some renown who has recently left her and their seven-year-old daughter, Jenna. Memory and longing mingle as Carolyn unravels her grief: a woman the couple once spotted in Paris becomes, in Carolyn's imagination, a model named Annabella; a young Swiss woman they encountered in Thailand fends off the advances of a pair of Israeli brothers, then gives in to one, then the other and ends up hating herself. Other stories involve memories of old boyfriends, revealing hidden bits of Carolyn's past; in between she allows glimpses into the couple's unhappiness: her lover's dissatisfaction with the constraints of fatherhood, routine and boredom, and the sense that he has simply fallen out of love. Finally, he is allowed to tell his own story, though there's no real suspense or denouement to this brief work that's defined mostly by an inchoate anticipation. (Dec.)
