The Shame

A “startlingly original” novel of “recursive loops through the mind of a woman who is breaking down from not making the art she absolutely must make” (Alexander Chee, Paris Review ). Alma and her family live close to the land, raising chickens and sheep. While her husband works at a nearby college, she stays home with their young children, cleans, searches for secondhand goods online, and reads books by the women writers she adores. Then, one night, she abruptly leaves it all behind—speeding thr