How to Leave a Country

In this luminous first novel, critically acclaimed short story writer Cris Mazza deftly carves characters and paints startling situations with clarity, dark humor and an oddly detached eroticism.

Phelan, a sculptor, and Tara, the painter he lives with, are engaged in a strange relationship. She remembers events from his life, but not her own. He remembers the inspirations for her paintings, but she cannot remember painting them. As Tara recalls significant episodes from Phelan's life--childhood obsessions, adolescent seductions and adult disappointments--she reveals the nature of their relationship, its animalistic impulses and creative energies, confronting questions about the nature of love, memory and reality.