Satellite

A hypnotic, unforgettable novel about a married woman who finds herself at a crossroads after discovering a mysterious TV channel showing a woman who looks just like her—but is living a radically different life

It’s the mid-90s, and Paul and Johanna are living a comfortable life in rural New Jersey. When Paul met and wooed Johanna, she was waiting tables at a miserable dive in North Carolina. Now, she has a nice house, a pool, and a purpose: her charming, devastatingly handsome husband, a moderately successful small-business owner nine years her senior. So when Paul sits down to dinner one night and asks her for a divorce, Johanna is utterly blindsided. She refuses.

Soon thereafter, Paul is injured in an accident. Johanna becomes his devoted caretaker, and talk of separation is forgotten. In the free moments she has, Johanna watches television—satellite TV, with its hundreds of channels, a reliable escape from her arduous days. Until she stumbles on something unusual: an extra channel, not found in the TV guide, whose only show is a round-the-clock feed of a woman who looks, acts, and talks just like her. Except this other Johanna lives in New York City, alone, and seems to have a different person in her bed every night. As watching morphs from hobby to obsession, the drama begins to move off-screen and encroach on Johanna’s real life, threatening the things she holds most dear.

Provocative and profound, Satellite is a transfixing novel that boldly explores the dynamics of love, fear, boredom, repulsion, and connection that make a marriage, and that define the complex act we call care. As compulsively readable as it is deeply felt, it confirms Isle McElroy as a virtuosic writer at the height of their talents.