From America to France and Eastern Europe to Japan, this quest for a
woman who has disappeared is a psychological mystery and an
architectural odyssey in one.
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**Where is Alma? A future husband--No. 4--is desperately seeking his
fiancée, who has disappeared. To locate her, he is interviewing her
three former husbands, her sister, and ex sister-in-law. Could she be
hiding in a French monastery? A Japanese shukubo (temple lodging)? Or
maybe she is the victim of a belief in a Balkan creation myth?
Written in six voices that come together in a seamless and often comical
narrative, Speaking to No. 4 is both a psychological mystery and a
meditation on our construction of space. As husband No. 3, the
Architect, says to husband-to-be No. 4, "Think of Japanese space as a
novel in which the main character is absent."