The Wife's Account

In The Wife's Account, Esta Spalding unflinchingly explores the mysterious and arbitrary losses that occur within love. These poems chart the course of a marriage from winter's end through spring and summer to the first days of fall, bringing to life the peculiar inhabitants of a neighbourhood: a woman with a metal detector who searches for treasure, a pregnant skunk and a one-eyed mouse, a group of nudists, the elderly Mrs. Barlowe and her plum tree. Drawing on the historical figures of Pharaoh Ramses II and his wife, Nefertari, on Lady Diana Spencer, and on the character Alicia, the wife and spy from Hitchcock's Notorious, The Wife's Account is Spalding's strangest and boldest collection to date. It is a book of transformations -- both real and mythological -- of seasons, of relationships, of life and death; a book in which grief dissolves, absence becomes presence, and loss leads to recovery; a collection both intimate and harrowing.