A marriage reaches the point where ordinary conversation no longer works.

In Late Sonata, Bryan Walpert writes through the violences that accumulate over years: estrangement, parenthood, memory, illness, artistic ambition, and shows how each shapes the persistence of love. Winner of the 2020 Viva la Novella Prize, it is a compact novel that resists melodrama, finding its emotional force instead in hesitation, miscommunication and negotiation. 

Walpert's prose is measured and psychologically acute, attentive to the rhythms of domestic life without ever becoming static. It will appeal to readers of Rachel Cusk, Deborah Levy, Jenny Offill and Sarah Moss, where interior life carries as much narrative weight as action.

First edition, first printing. Brio Books, 2020. Paperback in very good condition, with clean pages, a firm binding and only light shelf wear to the covers.