Lover

Kate—a wife, a mother of two, and a senior executive at a multinational hotel company—has made caring for others her life’s work, and she’s good at it. But when she opens her husband’s computer to find a series of email exchanges with an unknown woman, it all begins to fall apart. After ten years of marriage, Kate is forced to take a closer look at her relationship with her husband, and she must ask herself: How well do I really know him?

Things begin to spiral at work, too, with the political machinations in the office reaching an increasingly Shakespearean level of drama and ferocity. Kate gets caught between the ravings of power-hungry bosses and her job, which is to make the hotel guests happy. With both her work and home lives crumbling around her, Kate, for the first time, begins to think about what it is she really wants: from her husband, from her job, from her life.

Lover, the British writer Anna Raverat’s U.S. debut, is an observation of love, work, and life as seen through the lens of a troubled marriage. With the irresistible wit of Emma Straub’s The Vacationers, the compelling candor of Ayelet Waldman’s Love and Other Impossible Pursuits, and no shortage of brightening humor, Raverat paints an acute portrait of the female psyche, freshly exploring intimacy and the politics of work. Intellectually rich and captivatingly poignant, Lover is the powerful story of a woman making her way in the world.