Antonia Lively Breaks the Silence 313 pages

I really wanted to like this book, but I did not meet with success.  The story was promising and the writing is very good, but I could not become fond of the characters.  While that is not necessary for a book to be likable, these people kept stumping me with their behavior.  In addition, the point of view switches halfway through the telling of the story.  Sometimes that is not disruptive, but in this case it was.

The main character is a recently widowed young woman who is still mired in grief over her writer husband’s death.  The critic, who ruined her husband's career with a bad review, comes to town.  He is also a writer. The widow rents him the cottage behind her house where her husband retreated to write. The young lover (who is also a writer) of this critic moves into a house near the widow.  Pretty soon the convoluted storytelling and plot lines become tedious, however, and the book was difficult to follow.