HANDSOME

A woman battles memory loss while trying to make sense of her past in Palmer’s novel.

Evelyn has had enough. She’s decided to leave her husband, Jack. He micromanages everything she does, including how she packs her suitcase—and why is she packing a suitcase? She can’t quite remember. Still, she’s had enough of his affairs (with her ex-roommate, an art student, and a mother from the park). She’s tired of being the family breadwinner, stretched thin at Investor Media, while Jack pursues his passion, which is freelance sound design. Sure, Jack is an involved parent who finds the joy in ordinary moments by discovering frozen ponds to skate on or lunching in Moroccan olive groves, for example. After their first near-meeting, Evelyn would dream of his smile for the next six years until they bumped into each other again in a moment of NYC commuting magic. Yet despite their seemingly charmed past, she’s leaving him. Told in a series of meandering, splintered recollections, this novel tenderly charts the scope of Evelyn’s life from a childhood shadowed by loss on the Upper East Side, to the first spark of electric chemistry with Jack, to their experiences raising children. Palmer’s structural experimentation creates the perfect angular framework for this gorgeous, devastating exploration of what it means to love and care for someone in sickness and in health. Despite Evelyn’s struggles with memory loss, her narrative voice is quite easy to follow. The reader feels grounded in her condition and the woman she was and is invited to explore the vibrant New York City of her youth. Evelyn’s complex connection to Jack reads as genuine, with desire and resentment jostling together for primacy. Beyond this central bond, the novel broadens its view to explore how Evelyn’s condition affects her children and her family structure.

An elegant, imaginative testament to the pain and beauty of a life-spanning love.