Lover

Written by Anna Raverat

Narrated by Elizabeth Sastre

You can learn a lot about a husband by reading his e-mail-sometimes, too much Kate, a senior executive at a multinational hotel company, has devoted her life to her job and her family. Catering to the needs of others comes easily to her, but now, after ten years of marriage and two children, Kate discovers e-mails from her husband to another woman. Forced to take a long look at her marriage, she finds that there are all kinds of things she's been doing her best not to see. At the same time, the political machinations in her office begin to take on an increasingly Shakespearean level of drama and ferocity. With both her work and home lives crumbling around her, Kate has to keep up appearances for her daughters as she tries to figure out who her husband really is and what he means to her now. Lover, the British writer Anna Raverat's U.S. debut, is a detailed observation of love, work, and life told through a woman's crumbling marriage. In a first-person voice so compelling that the novel reads like a thriller, Raverat paints an acute portrait of the female psyche, exploring intimacy and the politics of work. Lover is both an intellectually rich and an emotionally gripping read about a woman finding her place in the world.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Recorded Books, Inc.
• Release date: Mar 7, 2017
• ISBN: 9781501949647

Anna Raverat

Anna Raverat was born in Cambridge and grew up in North Yorkshire with her parents, Lucy Raverat, a painter, and Andrew Rawlinson, an academic and writer, and her three younger siblings. She is descended from Gwendolin Raverat, a celebrated artist and member of the Bloomsbury group. Anna read English at King's College, Cambridge and now works as a consultant in organisation development and leadership. She lives in London with her three children. She is the author of Signs of Life and Lover.

Reviews for Lover

[pgchuis · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Kate discovers her husband has had what he describes as an "inappropriate friendship" with another woman, but then this turns out to be the tip of the iceberg. While dealing with the failure of her marriage, Kate is also grappling with deteriorating conditions at work.Apart from a bit of a sag in the middle during which I considered abandoning Kate to her misery, I enjoyed reading this. Kate had her flaws, but overall was a sympathetic character, and some of the scenes where she interacted with her daughters were very amusing. I particularly enjoyed the scene where she seeks to reassure them that their father leaving is not their fault, only to be countered with their take on the situation. The narrative was entirely from Kate's viewpoint, so we never got to hear Adam's perspective, and there was so little focus on the time before Kate discovered his infidelity that it was hard to assess whether Kate really had missed signs she should (could?) have picked up on or not. It mostly seemed as if Adam had been a very accomplished liar.I found the parts dealing with hotel management interesting, although Kate's actual job seemed to fluctuate between on the one hand being really quite high powered and on the other involving the micromanagement of individual staff members at specific hotels. I will always rinse the cups in my hotel room before using them from now on...