How does one take the otherwise typical story of an adultery love triangle - a 'sordid
trauerspiel' to use Marche's own phrase - and make it different, fresh, unique, a standout in a reader's mind? Marche's ambitious novel strikes out to do just that, using sparse evocative prose and typography that isn't exactly e-book friendly.

It is not just the typography that takes this book into the realm of experimental fiction. Marche exposes the reader to a restaurant conversation between the soon to be lovers by having the reader follow the verbal conversation by focusing the eyes towards the book's inner spine and reading the text left and right of the spine while progressing in a downward fashion of the open pages. The lovers' private thoughts during their conversation are depicted as outside edge margin notes. A different, unique way to tell a story and slightly mentally fatiguing from my point of view to continually jump around the pages to get the whole picture. Luckily, that was the method used for only part of the story.

The prose is what carried me through the story, that and the surprisingly tantalizing typographic changes. Marche plays with the written word with a skill that transforms the spartan into the eloquent with a minimal use of words. The thick, creamy linen type paper used in the printed book shows the attention to aesthetic details the publishers, Gaspereau Press Limited, put into the books they publish.

There is nothing overly likeable about the characters... or anything overly memorable about them for that matter. If Marche was trying to go for a presentation of average individuals, then I think he hit his mark. The plot was somewhat weak as well. It is really the prose and the typography that turns this otherwise mundane story into something rather exceptional.

Overall, a different type of presentation to an otherwise unremarkable story and not something that I would easy recommend to other readers without have a good understanding of the types of books that would appeal to them. ( )