In small-town Colorado, a 70-year-old widow knocks on her neighbour’s door. She gets lonely at night, she explains. She can’t sleep. He’s a widower, she guesses it might be the same for him. Will he come and sleep in her bed and talk to her in the night?
So begins a very sweet novel that is sometimes sad, but is also surprisingly hopeful and joyful. Addie and Louis, the main characters, face mixed reactions from their friends and neighbours, ironic considering their relationship isn’t, as everyone assumes, physical. They literally just talk and sleep. Night after night, they reveal more of themselves to each other, and reflect on the ways in which their lives were not what they expected or wanted.
This is only a short book, and I don’t want to give too much away about the ways in which the narrative develops. Addie in particular is a solid and interesting character, a woman who has faced loss and disappointment, but knows what she wants and is willing to make hard choices. The plot is fairly sparse, and the author allows the relationship between his two characters to unfurl gently and organically, without overburdening things with adjectives or dramatic revelations. A lovely and rewarding read.