A depressing facet of heterosexual womanhood is that sometimes you convince yourself to fall in love with someone emotionally unavailable and mediocre, only for that person to end up completely breaking your heart. If you’ve been in that situation, and you didn’t end up murdering the guy, you’re doing better than the heroine here. To understand why she killed her husband, Alberto, the narrator says we need to know the whole story. After pursuing him for reasons she herself barely seems to understand, Alberto agrees to marry her despite being in love with someone else. Their marriage is an obvious mistake from the start, and after decades of constant infidelity, she makes the first bold decision of her life. This novel is haunting and expansive beyond its 120 pages. It’s about as fun as it sounds – so, not at all – but if you’re a sucker for stories about pathetic women and insufferable men, this is for you. MG

Published by Daunt