The Law of Enclosures

From the jacket:

Dale Peck’s first novel, Martin and John, was hailed as “the best book of this year” (Edmund White) for its tender lyricism, brutal honesty, and “indelible portrait of gay life during the plague years” (Michiko Kakutani).

His new novel, The Law of Enclosures, is the harrowing story of Beatrice and Henry, who have two children, Susan and John, the protagonist of Martin and John. The Law of Enclosures charts the tortured relationship of Beatrice and Henry in chapters that alternate between the early days of their marriage and their last attempts, forty years later, to salvage a lifetime of accusations and recriminations, mistrust and betrayal.

At the heart of The Law of Enclosures is Dale Peck’s only family memoir, which becomes the lens through which we view Henry and Beatrice. This moving portrait of the artist himself transforms a simple account of marriage into a universal story that offers a profound perspective on cycles of growth and disintegration.

A brilliantly imagined novel in which time is incidental to the psychodynamics of love and the omniscient narrator perhaps the greatest fiction of all, The Law of Enclosures is a shocking view of marriage by one of the most prodigiously gifted writers of his generation.