Before, During, After - Tapa blanda

Bausch is very good at showing how rational, intelligent people allow themselves to commit the irrational act of falling in love. Superb * The Times * Terrific... Bausch is a master storyteller who appreciates subtleties most of us can't see, much less write * Seattle Times * One of Richard Bausch's many talents is the forthright ease with which he delivers his characters-and readers-to the gravest questions of love, faith, and ultimately God, even as he nimbly hides the answers in plain sight * New York Times * An accomplished and, at times, harrowing novel full of the kind of psychological power and exactitude that first-rate fiction does so well * Guardian *

When Natasha, a lonely congressional aide in D.C., meets Michael Faulk, an Episcopalian priest struggling with his faith, the stars seem to align. The blossoming of their love, over the spring and summer of 2001, is intellectually gratifying and intensely passionate. A month before their wedding, Natasha is vacationing in Jamaica and Faulk is in New York when the terrorist attacks of September 11 shatter the innocence of the nation. Alone in a state of abject terror and convinced that Faulk is dead, Natasha endures a private trauma of her own: she is raped by a young man on the shores of the Caribbean. A few days later, she and Faulk are reunited, but the horror of that day, and Natasha's inability to speak of it, irrevocably create a schism in their relationship, between 'before' and 'after'. In beautifully wrought, deeply unsettling prose, Bausch plumbs the complexities of trauma and how we respond to it, in public and in private. Before, During, and After is an exquisite and excruciating dissection of intimacy, of the secrets we must keep even as they destroy us. An unforgettable tour de force from one of America's most distinguished and commanding storytellers.