Constance

From the acclaimed author of Asylum and Martha Peake, a masterful new novel of psychological suspense, the story of a marriage haunted by trauma and descending into crisis.

The cool, beautiful Constance Schuyler lives alone in Manhattan in the early 1960s. At a literary party, she meets Sidney Klein, a professor of poetry twenty years her senior. Sidney is a single father with a poor marital record, and he pursues Constance with relentless determination. Eventually she surrenders, accepts his marriage proposal, and moves, with some dread, into his dark, book-filled apartment.

She can’t settle in. She’s tortured by memories of the bitterly unhappy childhood she spent with her father in a dilapidated house upstate. When she learns devastating new information about that past, Constance’s fragile psyche suffers a profound shock. Her marriage, already tottering, threatens to collapse completely. Frightened, desperate, and alone, Constance makes a disastrous decision and then looks on as her world rapidly falls apart. Her only consolation, as the city swelters in an interminable heat wave, is the friendship of Sidney’s son, Howard, a strange, delicate child, not unlike Constance herself.

The story of a marriage in crisis and a family haunted by trauma, Constance is also a tale of resilience and loyalty, and of the moral inspiration that can lead even the most lost of souls back to the light.

Patrick McGrath is the author of several critically acclaimed novels, including Asylum, Martha Peake, Port Mungo, Trauma, and Spider. Three of his novels have been adapted into films, including David Cronenberg’s Spider (2002), for which McGrath wrote the screenplay. Born in London, McGrath lives in New York.

Praise for Patrick McGrath

“A chilling story that works as both a Freudian parable and an old-fashioned gothic shocker.”—The New York Times on Asylum

“A terrific literary entertainment, one that will keep you on edge.” —The Washington Post on Trauma

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