Standard Deviation

Graham Cavanaugh is married to Audra, his second wife, who is as unlike his first wife as a person can be. Audra is charming, spontaneous and sociable. She talks without pause through her epidural, labour and delivery, lets the doorman move in, and seats the odd members of her son's Origami Club at the Thanksgiving table.

Life with her is fun and also tiring. Graham and Audra are raising a son who has Asperger's, and the book follows the ordinary run of their days: the small pleasures, the strains, the household that never quite settles down.

Then Elspeth, Graham's first wife, comes back into his life. A former spouse is hard to place. She might be a friend, an enemy, an old flame, or simply someone who knows him very well, and Graham cannot decide which. Her return sets him asking how one man can love two such different women, whether he chose rightly, and whether a right choice exists at all.

This is a comic novel about marriage after the early romance has faded, and about parenthood and the pull of the life not lived. The tone is warm and funny, with the humour coming from Audra's habits and the family's daily muddle, and the questions it raises about love stay close to home.