Two for the price of one

Writers like to hang out with other writers — at writing retreats, at book fairs, at book festivals. So why not a retirement home just for writers? Terri-Lynne DeFino imagines that very thing in The Bar Harbor Retirement Home for Famous Writers (and Their Muses) (2018).

Alfonse Carducci, the most famous of the famous writers, enters the home as the novel begins and is given the best room in the place. He is dying and so doesn't expect to be there long.

Alfonse is as famous for his adventurous love life as he is for his books, and one of the facility's other residents is Olivia, a former lover. While he still has feelings for her, his real reason for holding onto life for as long as possible is Cecibel, who quite literally is two-faced. An accident destroyed half of her beautiful face, leaving her a monster on the other side, she thinks. She wears her hair long to cover that side of her face. She lives and works at the home, stopping in to see Alphonse each day.

Lacking the energy to write a book by themselves, Alfonse, Olivia and another writer compose alternate chapters in a novel about a love triangle, complicated when another man and another woman enter the picture. And so we get to read their novel even as we read Defino's.

Cecibel finds herself in a love triangle of her own. She feels drawn to the dying Alfonse even as Finley, another employee with a tragic history, falls in love with her.

And so readers get to enjoy two stories at the same time, each quite different yet each about the mystery of love and the difficult choices it requires of us.