In her debut novel, The Affairs of Others, Amy Grace Loyd has created a protagonist who is at once enigmatic, shy, aloof and erotic, passionate and sexually reckless. Celia is a young widow whose late husband, also young, left her to find her way. There is no backstory to Celia: no family of origin, no pattern of friendships. She buys a small apartment building in Brooklyn and takes in four tenants.
One is Mr. Coughlan, an older man who found Celia and her building after his daughter had left him at an assisted living facility. Two others are Angie and Mitchell Braunstein, a couple who are at odds about whether or not to have a child. She is interested in any environmental cause she can find; he is not. Finally, there is George, a teacher longing to go to France to visit an ailing friend who wants to be able to return to his apartment. His solution is to sublet to Hope, whose husband recently left her for another woman. When he first approaches Celia about subletting, she demurs, but she is drawn to Hope, so she relents. What follows is a slow dance of all the walls coming down. Mr. Coughlan disappears, Mitchell is seen with another woman, Angie floods Celia with pamphlets and Hope takes up with Les, a brute of a man.
All semblance of separateness among the building's residents vanishes when Celia hears the sexual congress of Hope and Les, at first erotic and then frighteningly violent. Hope is injured; while she is hospitalized, Celia prowls her apartment. Then, she begins to snoop in the other apartments. Mr. Coughlan's daughter accuses her of not being watchful of her father; Celia goes to look for him.
Both Celia and Hope seem to be in fugue states, not recognizable to themselves, and in this condition, they gravitate toward one another, in friendship, solace and, eventually, intimacy. Hope's grown children enter the picture and Celia is mightily attracted to her son, Leo. He reciprocates the feeling.
The good news is that Celia is beginning to "move on" after the death of her husband. In searching for Mr. Coughlan, worrying about Angie and Mitchell, accommodating new feelings for a man and a woman, she is no longer isolated. Her permeability will lead her in new directions. --Valerie Ryan, Cannon Beach Book Company, Ore.
Shelf Talker: A young widow comes back to life through her involvement with her tenants in friendship and in intimacy.