Beloved author Louis Begley returns to the monied halls of the Upper
East Side with a sharp new comedy of manners. Divorced after decades of
comfortable marriage, retired journalist Hugo Gardner sets out to
explore paths not travelled.
After four decades of what he believes to be a happy, healthy
partnership, Hugo Gardner's world is overturned when he learns that his
wife, Valerie, is not only requesting a divorce but has left him for a
younger, more vital man. Hugo, an octogenarian political writer and
retired journalist for Time, must rethink the way he's lived, and
reassess how he'd like to spend his remaining years.
Reconsidering past relationships in his mind, with years of distance,
Hugo begins to see things in a new light: Valerie, whose youth and
ambition eventually came between them; his children, whose support might
be more financially than emotionally motivated; and his friends, who,
like him are rapidly aging before his very eyes. With an ominous
oncologist's report hanging over his head, Hugo decides to get away for
a bit, to a conference in Paris. There, a new romance blooms and Hugo
finds himself wondering if growing old in Paris might be the perfect
antidote to the drama he left behind in New York.
Unflinching, witty, and urbane as ever, Louis Begley delivers a spot-on
satire of the world of New York's aging elite, and uncovers the
unexpected delights a late-in-life change can offer.
