Lucky Night
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- 89,00 kr
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- 89,00 kr
Publisher Description
'A smart, sly and satisfying book'
PANDORA SYKES
'A crafty new locked-room thriller of adultery and disaster'
WASHINGTON POST
'An energizing reminder of what the novel can do'
REBECCA WAIT
A masterful novel - blistering in suspense and humour - about marriage, infidelity, love, and a blazing hotel room . . .
Nick Holloway is forty-six. A successful partner at a law firm, he has a gorgeous wife, a precious daughter, and a big house. If he also has gnawing disappointments, secret yearnings, and a creeping sense of opportunities wasted, well, that's nobody's fault but his own.
Jenny Parrish is forty. She has two lovely sons, a devoted if somewhat hapless husband, and recently is hugely successful in her dream vocation. It's a perfect life! So perfect, she can't help but wonder sometimes whether it's all going to come crashing down.
For the past six years, Nick and Jenny have been meeting at least once a month and having sex. Lots of sex. Great sex. They do not discuss their spouses, they never spend the night, and they never ever talk about what their relationship means. Because this thing they have? It's casual. Uncomplicated.
When Nick books a night at a fancy new hotel, the two decide to break one of their rules and spend the whole night together. It's business as usual-until a fire alarm goes off. At first they think it's a false alarm. But as the fire closes in, fear strips away their defenses and justifications, forcing Jenny and Nick to be honest, with each other and with themselves, about how they ended up in this room, and what these six years have really meant.
A meditation on whether it's possible to live an authentic life, and whether we can ever show our true selves, Eliza Kennedy's Lucky Night is a literary triumph.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In Kennedy's serviceable latest (after Do This for Me), the bounds of a 40-something couple's yearslong affair are tested by a hotel fire alarm. Nick, a high-powered lawyer, and Jenny, a successful YA romance author, first met at a parents' night at their children's school. Now, six years into their affair, they rendezvous at a ritzy Manhattan hotel, pretending they're only there for some "outrageous" and "filthy" sex (Nick's words). The truth is that each privately harbors serious feelings for the other. When a fire alarm goes off just as they finish having sex, neither is particularly worried (Nick calls the sound an "orgasm gong," and they trade jokes about an employee named Gong Boy who rings it out). As the alarm continues, however, their unease leads to more candid conversation; Jenny admits that she's just faked her orgasm and they wonder if they're in serious danger. When Nick tries to get a handle on what's happening by calling the front desk, the person who answers explains that the newly opened high-rise has been dealing with false alarms and they're "almost positive" this is a false one, too. But as the night wears on, the lovers start to panic. The novel doesn't quite reach the gravitas it aspires to, but Kennedy ably interweaves Nick and Jenny's flirty banter with more vulnerable exchanges. It's a pleasant enough romp.
