The Affairs of Others: A Novel

Written by Amy Grace Loyd

Narrated by Kathe Mazur

A MESMERIZING DEBUT NOVEL ABOUT A YOUNG WOMAN, HAUNTED BY LOSS, WHO REDISCOVERS PASSION AND POSSIBILITY WHEN SHE'S DRAWN INTO THE TANGLED LIVES OF HER NEIGHBORS

Five years after her young husband's death, Celia Cassill has moved from one Brooklyn neighborhood to another, but she has not moved on. The owner of a small apartment building, she has chosen her tenants for their ability to respect one another's privacy. Celia believes in boundaries, solitude, that she has a right to her ghosts. She is determined to live a life at a remove from the chaos and competition of modern life. Everything changes with the arrival of a new tenant, Hope, a dazzling woman of a certain age on the run from her husband's recent betrayal. When Hope begins a torrid and noisy affair, and another tenant mysteriously disappears, the carefully constructed walls of Celia's world are tested and the sanctity of her building is shattered—through violence and sex, in turns tender and dark. Ultimately, Celia and her tenants are forced to abandon their separate spaces for a far more intimate one, leading to a surprising conclusion and the promise of genuine joy.

Amy Grace Loyd investigates interior spaces of the body and the New York warrens in which her characters live, offering a startling emotional honesty about the traffic between men and women. The Affairs of Others is a story about the irrepressibility of life and desire, no matter the sorrows or obstacles.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Macmillan Audio
• Release date: Aug 27, 2013
• ISBN: 9781427241207

Amy Grace Loyd

AMY GRACE LOYD is an executive editor at Byliner Inc. and was the fiction and literary editor at Playboy magazine. She is the author of The Affairs of Others. A recipient of both MacDowell and Yaddo fellowships, she lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Reviews for The Affairs of Others

[knittingmomof3 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I was truly looking forward to The Affairs of Others by Amy Grace Loyd and unfortunately my expectations were not met. Others may find the genre more to their liking and I recommend reading other reviews.

[amandanan · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

3.5 stars

I enjoyed Loyd's writing, but found that I wasn't all that curious about the characters. I do appreciate how she created a tiny world inside a Brooklyn brownstone that was converted to apartments.

[delphica · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

This started off okay, when I was hopeful that it was going to be about awful people having a comeuppance, but it turned out that no, the book was about the awful people. While it is true that poor decisions can be the basis for interesting stories, it's not automatic. All the poor decisions depicted here are tiresome.Overall, I'm embarrassed it was set in New York.

[whitreidtan · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Grief and depression go hand in hand. And sometimes when they overwhelm a person, it is hard to go on being connected to the world. In Amy Grace Loyd's novel, The Affairs of Others, the main character has deliberately and intentionally closed herself off from others but her carefully constructed barriers are about to be crossed. Celia is 30 and she's been widowed for several years, having lost her husband to cancer. After his death, she bought a brownstone composed of four apartments, three of which she rents out to others. She's vetted her tenants very carefully so that they stay self-contained and don't create any drama that might interfere with her isolation. When her upstairs neighbor has the chance to go to France, he brings in a subletter named Hope, a beautiful and vibrant woman who has been betrayed by her husband of many years. Celia is attracted to the pulsing life in Hope and she can't help but hear all of the goings on upstairs, the result of Hope's new dangerous and abusive affair, being reluctantly drawn in to Hope's messy, troubled life and then to her other tenants' lives as well. Celia values privacy above all else although she has always had a detached interest in her tenants' comings and goings. She has no close relationships herself, holding herself remote from the possibility of feeling emotional pain like she experienced during her husband's illness. So her eventual intrusion into the lives of her neighbors is very definitely an unlooked for intimacy. She narrates her own story in semi stream of consciousness, resulting in a very reflective and sometimes navel-gazing tale. Unfortunately, Celia's remoteness extends to the reader's feelings about her as well, making her not very likable. The other characters, Hope; the elderly Mr. Caughlin, a former ferry captain who goes missing; and Angie Braunstein, whose husband leaves her when their dreams no longer coincide are not fully developed, perhaps because of Celia's long standing lack of desire to know those around her, and as such don't feel three dimensional. Celia's self-destructive and anonymous grasping at life in her random Metro encounters are tawdry and don't help her to become a character with whom the reader wants to spend more time. The writing here is meandering and self-conscious, occasionally overwritten. The tone never really lifts out of depressing, making the whole novel feel as if there's a damp grey cloth smothering it, even where the end is meant to show hope for the future. Celia learning that continued life is about connection and that shutting herself off from it shuts her out of any meaningful life feels muted as well. This is a very character driven, psychological novel that had so much sadly unrealized potential and I was glad to finally turn the last page.

[nyiper · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Celia is quite something---what starts as the experiences of a young widow becomes an exploration of a woman alone and her emotional extremes that she keeps quite hidden.....until she is exposed.....on purpose? The lives of the people in her rental house are so intertwined over time and we find more and more about them and about Celia as she "invades" their lives. Celia becomes part of the affairs of others, something she thought she was trying hard to avoid.

[brainannex · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

The writing is better than the story. There were sentences that were breathtaking which made up for the so-so-ness of the plot.

[muddyboy · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This is a thought provoking and nicely drawn portrayal of a young widow who is coming to terms with the loss of her husband. She is the owner of an apartment building and centers on the evolving relationships that she has with her tenants. These are an intriguing group that include a masochistic couple. an environmentalist and an elderly man whose daughter feels should be in a nursing home. Celia, the main character is a bit of a non threatening voyeur and the way she treats her tenants and their homes. This is a well written book and I can see why it is receiving all the acclaim that it is getting.