Estate

A lyrical novel of star-crossed love and desire from the celebrated poet Cynthia Zarin.

But what I didn't know when I wrote these pages is that love is elastic, that every place one is is the center of the maze. Later, I would imagine a past rather than a future because I knew better that the boat is always just this instant setting out from the shore.

During a spring and summer of erotic intensity, Caroline speaks and writes both to herself and to her lover as a new relationship unfolds. Estate is a compressed tour de force that sweeps across space and time, from New Guinea to word games, Italian cinema, and communication theory. In thoughts, letters, and scribbled messages, Cynthia Zarin limns the exigencies of desire-and asks: How can a person disappear in a hall of stories and reflections? Or not?