"Here is the most telling fact: you wish to possess me.
Here is another fact: I loved you and let you think you
could."
When Irene America discovers that her husband, Gil, has been
reading her diary, she begins a secret Blue Notebook,
stashed securely in a safe-deposit box. There she records
the truth about her life and her marriage, while turning her
Red Diary—hidden where Gil will find it—into a manipulative
farce. Alternating between these two records, complemented
by unflinching third-person narration, Shadow Tag is an
eerily gripping read.
When the novel opens, Irene is resuming work on her doctoral
thesis about George Catlin, the nineteenth-century painter
whose Native American subjects often regarded his portraits
with suspicious wonder. Gil, who gained notoriety as an
artist through his emotionally revealing portraits of his
wife—work that is adoring, sensual, and humiliating, even
shocking—realizes that his fear of losing Irene may force
him to create the defining work of his career.
Meanwhile, Irene and Gil fight to keep up appearances for
their three children: fourteen-year-old genius Florian, who
escapes his family's unraveling with joints and a stolen
bottle of wine; Riel, their only daughter, an
eleven-year-old feverishly planning to preserve her family,
no matter what disaster strikes; and sweet kindergartener
Stoney, who was born, his parents come to realize, at the
beginning of the end.
As her home increasingly becomes a place of violence and
secrets, and she drifts into alcoholism, Irene moves to end
her marriage. But her attachment to Gil is filled with
shadowy need and delicious ironies. In brilliantly
controlled prose, Shadow Tag fearlessly explores the complex
nature of love, the fluid boundaries of identity, and one
family's struggle for survival and redemption.
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