The Fall Affair by Vi Keeland
Somewhere in the first third of The Fall Affair by Vi Keeland, a man is standing in a ninety-year-old woman’s kitchen in Cortona, forced to read aloud a letter written by her late sister. The letter congratulates the recipient on outliving three husbands, two of whom were actually hers, notes that she is inheriting nothing, not even the unmatched Tupperware lids, and closes by explaining that her family burial plot has been donated to a more deserving stranger. The old woman sets the page on fire on her own front lawn and spits at the feet of the innocent granddaughter standing outside. That is Sophia Bianchi, and she has been dead since January. She is also, comfortably, the best character in this novel. The setup is efficient. Allegra Bianchi, thirty-one, bills more hours than anyone at her Manhattan firm, gets passed over for partner in favour of a colleague whose qualifications are not strictly legal, and resigns in the men’s room in a way she will be explaining for years. Days later a letter arrives …
