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