Life Before Man

Life Before Man vividly portrays three people in thrall to the tragicomedy some call love - a particularly complicated love triangle that sets this poetic Margaret Atwood novel in motion. Elizabeth and Nate, though habitually unfaithful to each other, have remained married for more than a decade. But after Elizabeth’s latest lover commits suicide, she emerges from her grief to find that her gentle, indecisive husband is on the verge of leaving her. He has become enamoured of Lesje, a young paleontologist and perennial innocent who seems to prefer dinosaur fossils to humans. Elizabeth sets her sights on Lesje’s live-in boyfriend, William, and the ensuing emotional maelstrom threatens to upend all of their lives. Blending painful honesty with cutting satire, Margaret Atwood gives us characters whose haunting dilemmas linger long after the final page. "Elizabeth and Nate. Their marriage is deteriorating, not with one fell swoop, but with a slow drain that is leaving them empty. They each take lovers, a respite from their lives, but the man Elizabeth is seeing commits an irrevocable act ... Lesje and William. Not married, not dating, they are in an ambivalent state of living together. But something is missing, something is going stale. And Nate is becoming obsessed with Lesje, who works with Elizabeth ... Two couples, more apart than together, whose complicated lives are tied to each other and to an unstoppable chain of events that is slowly shattering them to pieces -- in this compelling tale by Margaret Atwood, one of today's most acclaimed authors."--Back cover Imprisoned by walls of their own construction, here are three people, each in midlife, in midcrisis, forced to make choices--after the rules have changed. Elizabeth, with her controlled sensuality, her suppressed rage, is married to the wrong man. She has just lost her latest lover to suicide. Nate, her gentle, indecisive husband, is planning to leave her for Lesje, a perennial innocent who prefers dinosaurs to men. Hanging over them all is the ghost of Elizabeth's dead lover...and the dizzying threat of three lives careening inevitably toward the same climax.