A Ship Made of Paper by Scott Spencer

This is a love story.  Daniel Emerson is a New York City lawyer who has returned to his hometown of Leyden, N.Y., a picturesque Hudson Valley village, with his girlfriend Kate, a novelist, and her daughter, Ruby. Kate drinks and obsesses about the O.J. Simpson trial instead of writing fiction. Daniel finds himself falling in love with Iris Davenport, an African-American grad student at the local university. Iris is married to Hampton Welles, an investment adviser. The book records Iris and Daniel's affair from both perspectives and poses the question, is their fleeting happiness really worth so much ruin?

It is entertaining.  At times, this is more about interracial relationships than an affair.  I didn't like how Kate and Hampton are both very unlikeable characters....probably to help us find Daniel and Iris' affair less objectionable to our moral standards and maybe even to sympathize with them when they each have such unappealing spouses.  Still, it is an enjoyable enough read that I am staying with it for quotes such as this: "Time passes, bodies decay, every day spent without love is lost forever, the time cannot be recaptured or made up for."

There are enough twists to the story to keep your interest.  The ending felt hanging but, I think it was to show that nothing in life ends how we want and is definitely not in a neat and tidy box.


Rating: 4.2 Good