+1: A Novel

At fifty, Alice Gregory discovers that she can’t really see anymore. So she buys a pair of drugstore reading glasses, strength +1, and her suburban life looks magically more inviting. Outside the circle of marriage and family, shrinking as her three sons leave home, fresh vistas open. Friendships and rekindled career ambitions bring unexpected excitement and responsibility.

Can Alice, with the power of her mature vision, negotiate life more successfully than she did as a young woman? Can she sustain the bonds of home, and also fulfil her longing to experience something more than what she already knows? When chance savagely dismantles the Gregory family, Alice’s husband, Richard, a successful publisher, puts on her glasses, struggling to see the world as Alice sees it.

+1 is a sparkling, resonant exploration of what it means to love completely and of our limitless, even reckless, need to grow and to change.