Lucky Night
A Novel
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- ¥2,200
発行者による作品情報
“[A] crafty new locked-room thriller of adultery and disaster . . . a fresh take on middle-class marital malaise . . . Kennedy’s page-turner brings [our] fundamental human fears into the blazing light of a towering inferno.”—The Washington Post
Two people, one hotel room, and all the choices and complications that make up a life.
After six years of a stolen hour here, another there, tonight is going to be different for Nick Holloway and Jenny Parrish. They’ve booked a room in a new luxury hotel in Manhattan, where they’ll spend the entire night together for the first time. Expectations are running high for this brief reprieve from ordinary life: they both need a good bout of ravishing sex and witty conversation.
But that’s not what they get.
Because they’ve barely gotten started when a smoke alarm goes off. Nick is annoyed, but not worried about what must be only a minor glitch. Jenny is anxious, guilty—is karma coming for them at last?
This existential page-turner seamlessly shifts between Nick and Jenny’s perspectives as the reality of their situation becomes apparent, and all their secrets, evasions and regrets come spilling out. Stripped of their defenses, disagreeing about everything, these two flawed, funny, very different people are forced to be honest—with each other and themselves—about what they want, all they stand to lose, and whether their affair is really as casual as it seems.
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.
