Cover design : © Catherine Casalino | Cover photograph : © Cláudia Fernandes
O MY DARLING tells the story of Clark and Charlotte—a devoted young couple whose marriage begins to implode as they move into their first house. The external lives of Clark, a high school guidance counselor, and Charlotte, a bookkeeper, are utterly ordinary; but their interior lives are as bold and complex as abstract paintings colored by imagined possibilities, childhood joys, and, more darkly, by deeply buried fears.
Even their cherished yellow "dream" house seems permeated with the quiet sorrows and restless discontents of its previous owners. When Clark rescues a young boy from drowning, a chain of events—some comic, some harrowing—is set in motion, revealing the fault lines of the couple's relationship and individual psyches.
PRAISE
“Love, marriage, and the whole damn thing—all spanned in a witty, tender first novel. With a flavor of Lorrie Moore, graceful, bright, modern writing.”
“Utterly devourable. . .gently, and beautifully unfolds, like a gauzy curtain in an open window.”
“Sparkles and delights…crystalline insights into the nature of love and flashes of narrative brilliance.”
“Given its level of sophistication and off-center wit, it’s a bit startling to realize that O My Darling is Amity Gaige’s first novel. The characters, beautifully drawn, are as unsentimental towards one another as their author is towards them and yet, wonderfully, this novel, with its many ambushes of lyrical moments, is deeply felt.”
“Generous, wry and bristling with humor, O My Darling is a gift to the reader. There are so many pleasures to be found here: indelible images, crystalline prose, and two characters that are rendered with such unerring insight and tenderness, they will continue to haunt us long after we have, with great reluctance, left them.”
“This fine, intelligent novel should be required reading for anyone who is (a) in love, (b) engaged, (c) wed, or (d) planning on buying real estate, especially as a concrete expression of (a), (b), or (c). In Oh My Darling, with one scalpel-sharp sentence after another, Amity Gaige has cut a beautifully sad pattern into the skin of that rootless, troubled creature—the modern, secular marriage.”
“Amity Gaige seems to know everything there is to know about us. [The novel’s] details are so sharp and unique, every sentence carries the burden (and sometimes also the joy) of truth.”
“A sharply drawn, darkly witty, supremely intelligent guide to the souls of two deeply fearful people fighting to make a life together. . .Despite their flaws, Clark and Charlotte burst with truth and realness in this refreshing story of what ties two people together.”
“A life-enhancing novel and a stunning debut. . . Gaige’s style sings and twists. Each moment or shift in perspective conjures up a strange image, a quirky insight, a sumptuous simile. . .haunting, riveting, wonderful.””