And Notre Dame is Burning

'A beautiful account of one woman's story that shines with the truth of all our stories' Sophie Ward, author of Love and Other Thought ExperimentsI find myself wondering what would have happened if I had been more clear.If our relationship had not begun with this one tiny untruth. Time has flattened for Esther. Her storybook marriage begins, and ends, in the shadow of Notre Dame cathedral.Sifting through the ashes of their years together, a time now collapsed by grief, she finds a mismatched litany: mountain lions, a Paris bookshop, bad dancing, bad faith, marshland, prairieland, miscarriage, motherhood, bagels, Eve. In order to understand this new story, Esther seeks help - from generations of women, from a book about evolution, from a friendly philosopher/scientist with a solid grasp of the space-time continuum. Mostly, though, she writes - fragments, notes, letters - tracing a fine line between a story that soothes and one that suffocates; confronting the impossibility of communicat