ORDINARY HAZARDS

From a stool in her local bar, Emma Murphy reckons with the maelstrom of her broken life.

With multiple degrees from prestigious schools, Emma ought to be on Wall Street, but she chose to live in a small town in upstate New York, where she co-runs a multimillion dollar hedge fund and teaches advanced communications to MBA students at the local university. She likes the classroom, and her entire curriculum rests on the importance of storytelling: Beginnings, endings, and transitions. That storytelling arc is the basis of her own bestselling book, The Breakout Effect. But somewhere along the line, Emma’s own story has broken down. So in The Final Final bar she sits, drinking whiskey, thinking about Lucas and their failed marriage. A few locals populate the scene, including Jimmy, Martin, and Cal, whose 10-year-old daughter, Summer, idly draws pictures at a table. They were all Lucas’ friends first. Meanwhile, Samantha, her oldest friend, and Grace, her business partner, have been texting Emma, hoping to bring her to Samantha’s house by 9 p.m. For a girls night? An intervention? Either way, Emma has no intention of showing up. And Emma is not the only one falling apart tonight. One of her fellow barfly’s troubles may spell the end of everything. In this, her debut novel, Bruno shows a masterful talent for sketching both the outlines and depths of depression, guilt, and self-loathing. In chapters structured according to the time of night, Bruno leads us hour by hour, step by step down the staircase into Emma’s past. In the harsh light of an alcoholic’s making an inventory of her moral failings, we witness Emma tell the beginning and ending of her love affair with Lucas. And we gingerly descend into their heartbreaking transition.

A spellbinding portrait of grief.