Banishing Verona

A couple begins an intense affair, only to be separated abruptly — and perhaps irrevocably — in this surprising, suspenseful love story.

Zeke is twenty-nine, a man who looks like a Raphael angel and who earns his living as a painter and carpenter in London. He reads the world a little differently from most people and has trouble with such ordinary activities as lying, deciphering expressions, recognizing faces. Verona is thirty-seven, confident, hot-tempered, a modestly successful radio show host, unmarried, and seven months pregnant. When the two meet in a house that Zeke is renovating, they fall in love, only to be separated less than twenty-four hours later when Verona leaves abruptly, without explanation, for Boston.

Both Zeke and Verona, it turns out, have complications in their lives, though not of a romantic kind. Verona's involve her brother, Henry, who is tied up in shady financial dealings. Zeke's father has had a heart attack and his mother is threatening to run away with her lover, all of which puts pressure on Zeke to take over the family grocery business. And yet he finds himself following Verona to Boston. As he pursues her, and she pursues Henry, both are forced to ask the perplexing question: Can we ever know another person?

Deftly plotted and filled with unexpected twists, Banishing Verona marks the arrival of another lyrical and wise novel from a writer whose work "radiates with compassion and intelligence and always, deliciously, mystery" (Alice Sebold).

"Livesey constructs another of her reflective but surprisingly gripping tales....[N]otable for her penetrating knowledge of the human heart coupled with respect for its essential mysteries, both explored in elegant, evocative prose." Kirkus Reviews

"Told from the parallel viewpoints of her wistful hero and his winsome heroine, Livesey's unlikely yet enchanting romance poignantly reveals the mysterious machinations of the human heart." Booklist

"Margot Livesey gives us a witty 21st-century Odyssey by taking us to the outer limits of love and loyalty and back home again....You may...recognize bits of Zeke's malady in yourself and wish you had more of his special insight." Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

"This gem of a novel manages to be funny, frightening, and upbeat all at the same time. Highly recommended." Library Journal

"Banishing Verona reminds me just why Margot Livesey is one of my favorite contemporary writers, those who keep the novel alive and vividly engaging. For her keen wit and wise heart, for her mingling of the tender with the diabolical — never mind her knack for holding the reader in thrall to a suspenseful story — she is a master, pure and simple." Julia Glass, author of Three Junes

"Margot Livesey's is such a personal, endearing, sharp voice, and this is a sly, special and funny book." Diane Johnson, author of L'Affaire

"In Banishing Verona, Livesey, a first-rate storyteller, examines the ties that bind families and lovers. Her take on life is original, her use of perspective is deft, and her prose lovely. Zeke is captivating." USA Today

"Tantalizing...Livesey has taken a familiar plot device and has turned it into such a delicious literary construct that it seems new." Seattle Post-Intelligencer

"Livesey is interested not in medical conditions but in the human condition....In fact, [she] expands (as is fiction's mission) our notion of what being human can mean." New York Times

"In Livesey's deft hands, their connection is as credible (and incredible) as love itself....[She] pulls it off effortlessly." The Boston Globe

An obsessive-compulsive housepainter and a pregnant talk show host who goes back and forth between wanting to rescue her wayward brother and wanting to rescue herself, meet and spend the next few weeks chasing each other across continents to decide if it's the real thing.

Deftly plotted and filled with unexpected twists, Banishing Verona marks the arrival of another lyrical and wise novel from a writer whose work "radiates with compassion and intelligence and always, deliciously, mystery" (Alice Sebold).

Zeke is twenty-nine and working as a carpenter and painter in London. Verona is thirty-seven, headstrong, and seven months pregnant. When the two meet in a house that Zeke is renovating, they fall in love, only to be separated less than 24 hours later when Verona mysteriously disappears. After much searching, Zeke discovers that Verona has travelled to Boston to help Henry, her brother, disentangle himself from some shady financial matters. As impulsively as he fell for Verona, Zeke decides to follow her to Boston. It is here that both lovers take on further and more desperate searches of their own, and Livesey's sophisticated novel evolves into the most surprising and suspenseful of modern love stories.

Margot Livesey is the award-winning author of a story collection, Learning by Heart, and of the novels Homework, Criminals, The Missing World, and Eva Moves the Furniture, which was a New York Times Notable Book, an Atlantic Monthly Best Book of the Year, and a PEN/Winship finalist. Born in Scotland, she currently lives in the Boston area, where she is writer in residence at Emerson College.