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Critics' Opinion:
Readers' Opinion:
First Published:
Jan 2015, 336 pages
Paperback:
Feb 2016, 352 pages
With the emotional complexity of Everything I Never Told You and the psychological suspense of The Girl on the Train, O. Henry Prize winner Jan Ellison delivers a brilliantly paced, beautifully written debut novel about one woman's reckoning with a youthful mistake.
Named one of the best books of the year by San Francisco Chronicle
At nineteen, Annie Black trades a bleak future in a washed-out California town for a London winter of drinking and abandon. Twenty years later, she is a San Francisco lighting designer and happily married mother of three who has put her reckless youth behind her. Then a photo from that distant winter in Europe arrives inexplicably in her mailbox, and an old obsession is awakened.
Past and present collide, Annie's marriage falters, and her son takes a car ride that ends with his life hanging in the balance. Now Annie must confront her own transgressions and fight for her family by untangling the mysteries of the turbulent winter that drew an invisible map of her future. Gripping, insightful, and lyrical, A Small Indiscretion announces the arrival of a major new voice in literary suspense as it unfolds a story of denial, passion, forgiveness—and the redemptive power of love.
Paperback published Feb 2016. First published in hardcover & ebook in 2014.
Excerpt
A Small Indiscretion
London, the year I turned twenty.
I wore a winter coat, the first I'd ever owned—a man's coat purchased at a secondhand store. I wore it every day, along with a silk scarf tied around my neck, imagining I looked arty or sophisticated. Each scarf cost a pound, and I bought them from an Indian woman who kept a stall in the tube station at Victoria, where I caught my train to work. They were thin, crinkled things, not the sort of scarves that ought to be worn to work in an office or that offered any protection against the cold. But I could not resist them, their weightlessness and soft, faint colors. The money I spent on them, and the habit I adopted of wearing a different one each day, seems to me now a haphazard indulgence, an attempt to prove that I was the kind of girl capable of throwing herself headlong into an affair with her boss—a married man twice her age—and escaping without consequence.
"Church," he said, the morning ...
Here are some of the comments posted about A Small Indiscretion.
You can see the full discussion here.
After the conclusion fo the novel, how do you imagine events unfolding?
I found it interesting that we don't get to know what happens in terms of any relationships except for Annie and Jonathan. I think Robbie will understand and accept the situation that Annie was in. There didn't seem to ever be a case where she ... - laurieh
Annie writes: "The heart is large, and there is more than one material in the bucket we call love." How does the novel address the theme of the nature of love? How do notions or definitions of love evolve as the novel progresses?
I am writing this with a month's distance from reading the book. This quote captures what I found interesting about the book - the examination of different kinds of love and the challenges we have in balancing these. Sexual love, love for children, ... - AmyD
Ask the Author
There isn't much I could say to my twenty-year-old self she wasn't already telling herself--then systematically ignoring. "All in good time," for instance. "Everything in moderation." These were the mantras I whispered then ignored as I rushed ... - davinamw
Did the revelation in the letter from Emmie's uncle come as a surprise? What previous scenes hint at this revelation? Is Emme justified in holding Annie responsible?
I had suspected that Emme was Daisy. But I didn't make the connection of the letter. I thought it was interesting that the Author never let us know exactly what the letter said. So the reader can imagine what the letter says. I probably think it ... - Navy Mom
How can Annie's statement that it is "easier to blame the impulsiveness of youth than the wanton self-indulgence of a grown woman" be assessed in the context of her story?
I agree with her that her transgressions as a young woman are more forgiveable than what she did as a mature adult. She obviously has impulse control issues. I think most everyone wonders what might have happened if they had made different decisions ... - darylb
Emma Donoghue, New York Times bestselling author of Room
An engrossing, believable, gracefully written family drama that reveals our past's bare-knuckle grip on our present.
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