A Disorder Peculiar to the Country

To each other’s regret, both Marshall and Joyce survived 9/11. But it looks unlikely that they will survive the apparently endless war of their divorce. Both refuse to move out of the apartment, on their lawyers’ orders, and neither is above using the children as footsoldiers in their battle. They will use any psychological weapon that comes to hand – sex; money; friends; relations – to gain an advantage that might prove decisive. As the months pass the domestic skirmishes begin to echo the international. In both theatres of war, events are becoming crazier, but people tend to break before nations do. Ken Kalfus’s new novel is a brilliantly insightful and compelling portrait of what our modern state of perpetual war does on the home front.