Where You Are

by Michael Burns

"I can't take it anymore. Love, L" writes Paul Embry's wife of less than a year on the envelope of an electric bill. Thus begins the late summer and fall of Paul Embry's discontent as he struggles to come to grips with the ambivalence he feels about his marriage that this act of his young wife generates in him. In phone conversations with her, later, Paul learns that she has fled to San Francisco, California; he comes to discover that her motive is to catalyze a change in their lives, to induce him to pull up roots from the town where he was born and lived all his life, to begin a new life in a new city, far from the stultifying influence of the depressed New Hampshire mill town where they had married and were living.

246 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2009

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads' database with this name. See this thread for more information.

Reviews

[Jen Knox · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a well-paced literary novel that explores relationships, loneliness, and the irrationality of longing for a thing one will never have. I loved it. The writing is clean and beautiful, and there is attention to words here like I rarely see in contemporary fiction--Burns has that ability to bring you into his character's world through the richness of details. The story is one that most people will be able to relate to, if in their own way, if ever the reader has take for granted another's role in his/her life. This is also a story about what it means to start over.