The Life Room - 9780151010479

Eleanor Cahn is a professor of literature, the wife of a successful surgeon, and a devoted mother. But on a trip to Paris to present a paper on Anna Karenina, Eleanor reconnects with Stephen - a childhood friend, and more. The encounter ignites a discontent that she alternately struggles to suppress and explore, and that reawakens memories of her hidden erotic past - with alluring, elusive Stephen; with ethereal William, her high school boyfriend; with married, egotistical Adam, the painter who initiated her into the intimacies of the "life room," where the artist's model sometimes becomes muse; and with loyal, steady Michael, her husband. On her return to New York, Eleanor and Stephen's charged attraction takes on a life of its own and threatens to destroy everything she has.
An astute portrayal of one woman's interior journey to recover her true self in the wake of irrevocable choices, The Life Room shows how the collision of past and present can challenge the myths we create for ourselves and poses the question: Should we remain faithful to those we love, even as their love proves imperfect?
Jill Bialosky has created a piercingly real heroine caught, like Tolstoy's immortal heroine, between desire and responsibility.