Other Women

Caroline Kelley is thirty-five, raising two young sons, and out of options. Her marriage has failed, her relationship with a woman is ending badly, and her work as an emergency room nurse leaves her numb and hopeless.

She has tried a long list of answers, from marriage and monogamy to communism, feminism, drink and drugs. Now she sees only two ways forward, suicide or psychotherapy. Because she is a realist and a devoted mother, she picks therapy.

Most of the novel takes place in Caroline's sessions with Dr. Hannah Burke. The tone is wrenching and painfully funny, with Caroline's dark humour running alongside her despair.

Hannah is a brilliant therapist, but helping Caroline forces her to look again at her own demons. It is Lisa Alther's third novel, and the quietest of her books, with a close focus on what goes on in the mind. The question it turns on is whether two troubled women in one room can get Caroline's life back on track.