Glass by Sam Savage

Tasked with writing the preface to a reissue of her late husband’s long-out-of-print novel, Edna is unexpectedly asked to take care of a vacationing neighbor’s pet rat, an aquarium of fish, and an apartment full of potted plants. Sitting at her typewriter day after day, her mind drifts from one thing to another in a Proustian marathon of introspection. What eventually unfolds, as if by accident, is the story of a marriage and a portrait of a mind pushed to its limits. The reader is never quite certain if Edna’s preface is an homage to her late husband or an act of belated revenge. Is she the cultured and hypersensitive victim of a crass and brutally ambitious husband? Or was Clarence the long-suffering caretaker of a neurotic and delusional wife?

The unforgettable characters in Savage’s two hit novels Firmin and The Cry of the Sloth garnered worldwide critical acclaim. In Edna, once again Sam Savage has created a character marked by contradiction—simultaneously appealing and exasperating, comical and tragic.

Paperback: 210 pages
Publisher: Coffee House Press (September 6, 2011)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1566892732
ISBN-13: 978-1566892735