The wife has it all. A big house in a nice neighborhood, a ride-or-die snarky best friend, Temi, with whom to laugh about facile men, and a devoted husband who loves her above all else--even his distate for Temi. On a seemingly normal day, Temi comes over to spend a lazy afternoon with the wife: drinking wine, eating snacks, and laughing caustically about the husband's shortcomings. But when the husband comes home and a series of confessions are made, the wife's two confidantes are suddenly forced to jockey for their positions, throwing everyone's integrity into question--and their long-drawn-out territorial dance, carefully constructed over years, into utter chaos.
Agbaje-Williams writes in a fluid, conversational style that dissolves paper and ink into sound waves. Arranged in three acts — I mean, chapters — the novel is so theatrical in its structure and immediacy that the moment you finish reading it, you’ll imagine you actually heard it ... [A] crafty novel ... This comédie à trois moves along so briskly and with such sly wit that it’s easy to overlook how the novel teases issues of class and race.
Tightly constructed ... A mashup of domestic noir and comedy of mannersa mashup of domestic noir and comedy of manners ... The result is decidedly more discomforting than amusing ... Of course, fictional characters needn't be likeable or sympathetic to be effective, but they must be interesting ... Agbaje-Williams fails to make us care how this power grab plays out.
Bitterly funny ... Agbaje-Williams' choice to forgo quotation marks is an annoyance. A few times, I found myself having to trace through conversations to figure out who said what. That's a small price to pay, however, for the incisive portraits she creates of her three characters.
