Comfort Me With Apples delivers the exquisite prose Valente is known for and offers a biblical retelling worth mulling over. The story follows Sophia, the only woman in Arcadia Gardens, who lives a perfect life with her perfect husband among a menagerie of anthropomorphic neighbors. Everything is perfect in Sophia's life until a random decision leads her to question if her life is a lie. What follows is an exploration of how women break free of the roles assigned to them, often to great consequence, and the suppression and demonization of feminine wisdom. While compelling, the novel is far too short. It's easy to imagine a grander, more ambitious, and revolutionary story that sees Sophia making her way out of Arcadia to find the escaped criminal mentioned early on or her presence guiding the woman who is revealed on the final page.

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I think this more a novella than a full on novel. It is a well written tale about good and evil.

Can you love someone too much? Sophia believes her husband is her soulmate, the perfect man, the perfect partner. Yes, he is away on business a lot. but he hates their time apart as much as she does, after all, te tells he so. Still, a niggling doubt in her mind points to the strange expression on her husband’s face after he returns from those trips. And that locked basement door, that’s strange isn’t it? Her neighbors are no help, they don’t even look her in the eye. This is a short story more than a novel with a heroine that doesn’t seem quite real, but Valente has has her reasons…..