Institut Ramon LLull

A couple that has been married for twenty-five years find themselves at an impasse. Their twins are grown and she finds that she once again has time for herself, leading her to recover her old habit of translating poems in her mind. With this time comes a marital crisis. Is she suddenly allergic to him? Or has she just heard all of his stories? They decide to try silence and three weeks pass without even a letter exchanged between them, when their anniversary arrives. How far will her husband go with his perverse surprise gift? Meanwhile, a parallel plot is told in alternating chapters, of a housekeeper who homeschools her son in her employer’s library, and how the bookish young man, once he finds a friend, acts out Moby Dick in the woods with him, over and over again. As the two stories come together deftly, the couple dissects the possibility of ever falling in love with each other again and the differences between fiction and lies.