Book Review: "Evidence of the Affair" by Taylor Jenkins Reid

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 favor. I recently found some love letters in my husband's briefcase that I believe to be from your wife, Janet...

With those words, this potent short story by Taylor Jenkins Reid begins. It's December 1976, and Carrie Allsop has taken every last ounce of courage to write the man whose wife she believes is having an affair with her husband. She asks him if he has seen any letters her husband wrote to his wife, and if he has, she asks him to send them to her. She offers to do the same if he'd like to see his wife's letters, but Carrie imagines his first reaction to her letter will be shock.

"It is funny the crazy things our brains make up to save us from the truth. I have had fantasies that Ken is writing a screenplay and that he had the letters for research. Isn't that wild?"

David is, as Carrie surmised, shocked by the news she has sent him and is hurt by his wife's betrayal, but isn't really surprised, as their marriage had been strained for some time. As he tries to recover from the blow, he realizes that the only person he can rely on is Carrie, and the two begin to build a friendship based on such an awkward common bond.

As their friendship grows, they struggle with what to do. Should they confront their spouses, which could lead to the end of their marriages? Is that what they want? Do they want to start life anew, or do they want one more try at recapturing the magic they once had with their spouse? Both Carrie and David aren't sure what they want, and they aren't sure at first what their spouses' next steps will be either.

"I've always been struck by the idea that you can't be all that happy something has returned if it doesn't go away in the first place. But what if the thing goes away and never comes back?"

Reid holds your attention from start to finish, and throws in a bit of a twist for good measure. It's amazing how satisfying, how powerful, how poignant a story like this can be, and while I felt like she took you on a complete journey in a short number of pages, I'd still love to see what came next for these characters.

I read Reid's The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo a week or two ago, and it will undoubtedly be on my list of the best books I read this year. Once again, she proves she is an expert storyteller, and I can't wait to jump in and devour more of her fiction, because I love the way she writes.

Some may not love short stories, but this epistolary story feels more like a conversation than anything else. It won't take you long to read it, but definitely read it.