Julie's Review: The Affairs of Others

Summary: Five years after her young husbands death, Celia Cassill has moved from one Brooklyn neighborhood to another, but she has not moved on. The owner of a small apartment building, she has chosen her tenants for their ability to respect one anothers privacy. Celia believes in boundaries, solitude, that she has a right to her ghosts. She is determined to live a life at a remove from the chaos and competition of modern life. Everything changes with the arrival of a new tenant, Hope, a dazzling woman of a certain age on the run from her husbands recent betrayal. When Hope begins a torrid and noisy affair, and another tenant mysteriously disappears, the carefully constructed walls of Celia's world are soon tested and the sanctity of her building is shattered;through violence and sex, in turns tender and dark. Ultimately, Celia and her tenants are forced to abandon their separate spaces for a far more intimate one, leading to a surprising conclusion and the promise of genuine joy. Amy Grace Loyd investigates interior spaces, of the body and the New York warrens in which her characters live, offering a startling emotional honesty about the traffic between men and women. The Affairs of Others is a story about the irrepressibly of life and desire, no matter its sorrows or obstacles. ~powells.com  

Review:  So the buzz around this book, I don't get it. Maybe The Affairs of Others was over my head or maybe it just wasn't my kind of book. Most of the time I felt like I was watching an art house movie where nothing happened but I felt like there should have been something.


Celia is a young widow but I had a hard time remembering that throughout the book. She just acts like she's a 60 year old lady who's lived her life, when really she hasn't lived anything. What happened to her is tragic but not the end.

Celia is miserable in her life and wants to live a quiet anonymous life, except she inserts herself into new sublet occupant, Hope's life. Why now? Why Hope? Is it because Hope is having all the sex that Celia isn't? Why is Celia drawn to Hope?

Some of the plot lines didn't really seem to have any structure. Perhaps they are inserted into the novel to get you to feel compassion for Celia but really all I felt was apathy. Actually that was all I felt throughout the whole book. That and I just wanted to know what the awful thing that Celia did  was exactly. Meant to be the climax of the novel, it was a blip. I pretty much guess it earlier in the book and didn't think it was that big of a deal. It's not the first time it's been used in a novel or occurred in real life.

I'm sure there is an audience out there for this book but it wasn't me.


Final Take:  2/5

Thanks to Michelle from That's What She Read for my copy!

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