Evidence of the Affair by Taylor Jenkins Reid

 

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“Dear Mr. David Mayer,

My name is Carrie Allsop. Please accept my apologies for contacting you out of the blue. I am writing to ask a quite humbling favour.”

This epistolary short story starts with the above lines, and the correspondence between Carrie Allsop and David Mayer continues throughout, underlining the fact that their two spouses, who met at a medical conference in Coronado three months earlier, had embarked on an affair. Carrie had letters from David’s wife to her own husband to testify to the fact.

David, in turn, responds to Carrie’s letters and the two begin to confide in each other, trying to hold on to false hope. As David puts it in his first letter,

“How do you hold it inside and not let it show on your face?”

Little facets of the personalities of the characters come out in the letters. For example, Ken, the cheating husband, is methodical and logical and conscientious. In other words, Carrie has committed herself to a “bland life of boring.”

Carrie sends the amorous letters to David, letters written by Janet, David’s wife to her husband, Ken. In them, Janet confesses that Ken has ignited something in her that has never been touched before. She loves being the woman she is when she is with him.

David is heartbroken, yet he is not ready to confront his wife. “I’m not quite the man I pretend to be, and she’s certainly not the woman I thought she was.” Carrie on her part is swamped with the insecurities of being thirty, single and childless.

Slowly, the letters reveal the growing closeness between Carrie and David. At one point, they decide to meet and carry on the correspondence as well. This time, David finds love letters from Ken to Janet where he calls her “My woman from another life.” He, in turn, sends them to Carrie who is devastated to read them, especially lines like “I have never loved before. If this is what love is.”

As the months go by, the letters grow warmer, and the two jilted people find consolation in their friendship. They refer to each other as kindred spirits.

There comes a point when the affair between Janet and Ken comes to an end and Carrie and David need to make some tough decisions. Do they take back their erring spouses?

The end of the story takes the reader by surprise. Carrie confesses to David at one point

“But getting to know you – being with you- was the beginning of me understanding just how lost I was in my own life.”

There are so many lessons to be learnt from this seemingly simple story.

1.     Life can reveal unpleasant surprises. You need to make lemonade out of the lemons life throws at you.

2.     A good friend or confidant is a blessing in life.

3.     Sometime love disappears out of the window. It is better to be prepared, rather than be shattered.

4.     Do not settle for anything less than you deserve in life.

 The language is simple, the form epistolary. The narrative holds the interest till the last page, and the twist leaves the reader feeling strangely content. The whole book is around 80 pages, which makes it more of a novella, but it is packed with punches. It is only at the end that the significance of the title dawns on you.

Maybe, the main reason why this book impacted me so much is because the message it conveys is that however hard life hits you, there is always an element of hope that uplifts you as long as you are willing to grasp at it.

 *This short novella is available on Kindle unlimited.

 

Taylor Jenkins Reid - Goodreads

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