Upstate

A woman’s obses­sion dri­ves an affair out of con­trol, vio­lat­ing social con­tracts and dev­as­tat­ing the peo­ple in its path. For years, Ann and David shared week­ends and hol­i­days with coun­try friends Flora and Edwin, even after wom­an­iz­ing Edwin took Ann away to pick grapes and started a year-long affair. The ground rules were clear from the start: Flora accepted what she called Edwin’s mean­ing­less “things,” and Edwin stip­u­lated no divorces. But Ann’s empty mar­riage (to which David was pro­vid­ing nei­ther money nor sex) and grow­ing need for Edwin cause her to ask for more, lead­ing to estrange­ment and a star­tling climax.

Reviews

“This is prob­a­bly the most sex­u­ally explicit, the most spir­i­tual, the most sym­bolic, the most alle­gor­i­cal of Ms. Bingham’s fic­tion to date.”
— Daily News, Bowling Green, Kentucky

“A woman’s obses­sion dri­ves an affair out of con­trol, vio­lat­ing social con­tracts and dev­as­tat­ing the peo­ple in its path.”
— Library Journal

“Settling upstate to escape the imper­sonal, bustling city life, Ann and David had become involved in a tightly knit group of urban expa­tri­ates, held together by earthy Flora fields and her husband…The Fields have an “open” mar­riage…. Anne even­tu­ally takes her turn as Edwin’s sex part­ner, but h she proves unsuited for this brand of civ­i­lized adul­tery. When Edwin refuses to leave Flora, Ann embarks on an act of revenge that will leave both fam­i­lies dam­aged.”
— Publishers Weekly

“I read Upstate at one sit­ting, such is the gal­va­niz­ing force of this novel about love, its cru­elty and delight, its rid­dles. Ms. Bingham has the novelist’s voice, dis­pas­sion­ate yet ardent, able to evoke in one sen­tence the mys­ter­ies that lie beneath the sur­face of what we call ordi­nary life.“
— Paula Fox

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