The Daylight Marriage

April 15, 2015

Lovell and Hannah Hall are an odd couple, and not in an amusing way. Pretty and fun-loving Hannah has been somewhat spoiled by her wealthy parents. Lovell, whom she married on the rebound from a boyfriend who was wild and impulsive, is everything she is not: an introspective climate scientist who hides his feelings. Over the years, their relationship has become cold and distant, with their two children apparently not enough to hold them together. Finances are tight, and Hannah is beginning to feel trapped and restless. After a particularly nasty argument with Lovell, she disappears from their home in the Boston suburbs, and he is left scrambling for clues to her abrupt departure while trying to keep the family from splintering further as they await news of Hannah. VERDICT This spellbinding novel of suspense from the author of The Birthdays is told with great sympathy, as tension builds toward an inexorable conclusion. It can also be read as a cautionary tale both about a failed marriage and about how one impulsive decision can lead to a very dark place.--Leslie Patterson, Rehoboth, MA

Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

March 1, 2015
A wife and mother goes missing, and a family is forced to reassess both the past and the future.Call it Gone Woman. The morning after a bad argument with her husband, Lovell, a climate scientist, 39-year-old Hannah Hall disappears on her way to work. When some of her possessions and then pieces of bone are found on a South Boston beach, it gets progressively harder for Lovell and their two children, 15-year-old Janine and 8-year-old Ethan, to fend off their fears for her safety. These are the scant plot points of Best American Short Stories series editor Pitlor's second novel (The Birthdays, 2006), and they're augmented by flashbacks, character studies, and descriptions of the family's struggles to cope with Hannah's disappearance and the media's interest in it. Originally from a wealthy Martha's Vineyard family, Hannah emerges as unfulfilled and naive, still yearning at some romantic fantasy level for Doug, the handsome boy to whom she was originally engaged before he revealed his faithlessness. Lovell, from a semirural background in Maine, now wholly immersed in his work, couldn't believe his luck when Hannah accepted his proposal-"She was light years out of his league"-but that was before the marriage turned sexless and sour. A pall of unhappiness hangs over the story as the weaknesses of the marriage, Hannah's equivocal feelings, and the doomed nature of events (gradually revealed in chapters narrated from Hannah's point of view on that fateful day) are examined. While Lovell is a gloomy central character and Janine is insolent and disdainful in her teenage distress, Pitlor lays a closing gleam of compassion over them all. A technically accomplished but largely downbeat tale of miserable people learning life lessons late.

Starred review from March 1, 2015
Climate scientist Lovell and his beautiful but unhappy wife, Hannah, had a big fight the night before she went missing. As the days following her disappearance stretch into weeks, Lovell is forced to evaluate their relationship and the road that took them to this place, all the while dealing with the media, the police, and the suspicions of his own children. The dread-inducing narrative masterfully switches between Hannah's actions on that fateful day and Lovell's experience afterward. He had been deeply involved in his work, absent at home, and rubbed raw by Hannah's displeasure. Hannah, meanwhile, had fallen into the banal suburban life she had mocked. Pitlor brings forth the emotions that surge beneath the surface with the precision and power of a conductor. The couple's private examinations of how they ended up hurling insults at each other in their bedroom are thoughtful, though biased, and their combined perspectives create a more subtly shaded portrait of a marriage. This powerful analysis of how dreams become nightmares will make readers want to hold their loved ones close.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)