Avant et après la chute

Richard Bausch

480 pages

Résumé

From the prizewinning novelist and world-renowned short story writer, recipient of the PEN/Malamud Award and the Literature Award from the Academy of Arts and Letters, comes a gorgeously rendered, emotionally devastating account of a relationship eroded by secrets, set against the backdrop of a national tragedy.When Natasha, a lonely congressional aide in D.C., meets Michael Faulk, an Episcopalian priest struggling with his faith, the stars seem to align. The blossoming of their love over the spring and summer of 2001 is unspeakably tender, both intellectually gratifying and intensely passionate. A month before their wedding, Natasha is vacationing in Jamaica and Faulk is in New York when the terrorist attacks of September 11 shatter the innocence of the nation and of the two lovers. Alone in a state of abject terror, cut off from America and convinced that Faulk is dead, Natasha endures a private trauma of her own at the hands of a young man on the Caribbean shore. A few days later, she and Faulk are reunited, but the horror of that day, and Natasha's inability to speak of it, irrevocably bifurcate their relationship into "before" and "after." Their new marriage devolves into a claustrophobic state of repression, anxiety, and resentment, leaving them powerless to preserve the love they once felt.In beautifully wrought, deeply unsettling prose, Bausch plumbs the complexities of trauma and how we respond to it, in public and in private. Before, During, After is an exquisite and excruciating dissection of intimacy, of the secrets we must keep even as they destroy us. An unforgettable tour de force from one of America's most distinguished and commanding storytellers.