by Alan Saperstein
"When I arrived home from work I found my wife had killed our two sons and taken her own life. The cat was only sleeping." That is the chilling opening of a psychological thriller of a first novel, in which the atrocity becomes a metaphor for the emotional death of a family. In trying to understand what happened, the narrator, a successful 40ish food company executive, recalls his ardent courtship of his wife, their infidelities, his preoccupation with work and hers with dirty diapers, and their love-hate relationship with their children. "Harm," he concludes, "is done long before we realize it." This novel is loving, suspenseful, sometimes comic but, at bottom, sad and deeply disturbing. (Macmillan, $9.95)
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