The Twoweeks

Cal and Lara are happily married, though (problematically) not to one another. And though they came of age in the sexual wilderness of the 1960's, neither is seeking to expand any sexual horizons now, 10 years later. Nevertheless, they find themselves in what each presumes to be an altogether trite situation-committed to monogamy and fidelity, yet so powerfully drawn together that their "Fall" seems inevitable. The way out proposed by Lara, a "Twoweeks" carved out of their normal predictable lives, is intended of course to take two weeks and be done with it. What happens to these attractive, lively, storm-tossed souls before, during, and after the Twoweeks is the subject of Larry Duberstein's engaging new novel. Duberstein's first novel, The Marriage Hearse, while rife with surface irony and wit, was described by The New York TimesBook Review as "above all a love story and a rather touching one at that." The same can be said of Duberstein's 8th novel, The Twoweeks, though it travels an arc of over 30 years, where The Marriage Hearse takes place in the course of a single white night. The Twoweeks is also "above all a love story" and, like most good ones, it is as much about the dilemmas of love as the romance.