The story is simple: a love affair ends badly. A woman and a man marry, then cruelty, infidelity, and divorce. But this novel tells their story twice, from opposing perspectives. Our sympathies
are inverted; we don't know whom to trust; the distinction between truth and deception blurs, and then seems simply to dissolve. The novel shifts deftly between endless oppositions: lover and
beloved, angel and demon, master and slave, reader and writer. But inevitably both stories must arrive at the point of rienne va plus: the moment in roulette when all bets are off and you
either win or lose--the moment when the game becomes fate.
