Excerpt from The Book of George by Kate Greathead, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

George did his best to avoid them as they colonized various rooms of the house, eating and drinking and smoking.

The second night, as George was reading in bed, his bedroom door creaked open and one of them entered. She was shockingly skinny, with a shaved head and septum ring, but her most arresting feature was her eyes: a metallic gleam in her irises that must have been colored contacts. There was something fantastically sinister about the effect. Demonic. Earlier that day, George had caught himself staring at her as he ate a bowl of cereal at the kitchen counter.

Perhaps she'd taken it the wrong way.

George said nothing as she stripped down to her underpants and climbed into his bed. Her primitively angular breasts and hips that jutted out like spears were the first he'd encountered. They kept their underwear on, but the experience left George unsettled, and even a little depressed.

"How was your night?" Cressida asked with a knowing smile when he came downstairs the next morning.

* * *

George spent the next few nights at his friend Pete's. On Thursday he returned to change his clothes. He was surprised to discover the driveway, which had been jammed with cars belonging to Cressida's friends, was now clear. The house was still a mess, but quiet. His mother's suitcase was at the bottom of the stairs.

Ellen was in the kitchen, leaning over the sink, drinking straight from the faucet.

The countertops were covered with dishes, takeout containers, liquor bottles, things that were not ashtrays but were filled with cigarette butts. Open cabinets revealed bare shelves. The gift basket remained in the center of the kitchen table like a disemboweled carcass, its wicker skeleton surrounded by empty tins, tufts of paper confetti, pistachio shells, and husks of cellophane.

The late afternoon sun embalmed the tableau in a listless copper glaze.

"I thought you weren't getting back till Saturday," George said.

"Five nights was enough," Ellen said, wiping her mouth on the back of her hand as she turned off the water.

"Where's Dad?"

"He's still there."

George was confused. "In London? By himself?"

Ellen nodded. "He's fine. He's having a good time, doing what he likes to do." She smiled wanly. "He really likes to shop."

To hear her put it like this, without the snideness she adopted on the phone with her friends, was disconcerting.

"Sounds like a midlife crisis," George said with chipper authority.

He associated the term with New Yorker cartoons and sitcoms. He'd hoped the comment would inject the mood with a little levity.

But Ellen seemed to give it earnest consideration.

She started talking about how Denis never made partner at his law firm. He had gone through life feeling in the shadow of taller, more charismatic men. Men who weren't necessarily as smart, hardworking, or loyal as he was, but who had a certain swagger that earned them respect and credibility, resulting in opportunities that Denis felt he'd been denied.

"He doesn't feel very good about himself," she concluded, "and there's no question that the shopping has to do with that."

* * *

Ellen, whose family had money, had a small trust, to which Denis had access. That fall she discovered that he had secretly been dipping into it to pay off credit card debt he had amassed shopping for clothes. George made a point of being out of the house the Sunday his father moved out. When he returned that evening, George was relieved to find that Denis hadn't taken much; the house didn't feel very different.

Ellen set the table for two and defrosted a lasagna for dinner. Just as they sat down to eat, the doorbell rang.

"It's probably just a Seventh-day Adventist," Ellen said as George got up to answer it.

It was Denis.

The two hadn't exchanged a word about his moving out, or any of it. George hoped he wasn't about to initiate some kind of conversation now.

Excerpted from The Book of George by Kate Greathead. Copyright © 2024 by Kate Greathead. Excerpted by permission of Henry Holt and Company. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.