The Vixen Amber Halloway

Overview

Ophelia, a professor of Dante, is stricken when she discovers that her husband Andy has been cheating on her with a winsome colleague. What follows is Ophelia’s figurative descent into hell as she obsessively tracks her subjects, performs surveillance in her beat-up Volvo, and moves into the property next door to Amber’s, which has gone into foreclosure. She spies on the lovers, growing more and more estranged from reality. Andy’s betrayal reawakens the earlier trauma of abandonment by her mother at the age of eight. When Andy and Amber become engaged, Ophelia snaps. The story is a jailhouse confessional, a dark comedy, an oeuvre of women’s rage, a suspenseful revenge fantasy, and a moving portrait of one woman’s psychological breakdown.

Reviews

"Think suspense and thriller. LaHines’s fascinating narrator, Ophelia, is decidedly pathological...she’s also sympathetic, humorous, intelligent-a deeply damaged woman telling her tale to a prison psychiatrist in preparation for a hearing before a parole board, but it’s not a confession." —Baum on Books, NPR Podcast

"A heart-wrenching account of one soon-to-be-ex-wife's psychological breakdown... a compulsive read." —Katrīna Biele, reviewer for Medium.com

Author Biography

Carol LaHines’ debut novel, Someday Everything Will All Make Sense, was a finalist for the Nilsen Prize for a First Novel and an American Fiction Award. Her fiction has appeared in literary journals including Fence, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Denver Quarterly, Cimarron Review, The Literary Review, The Laurel Review, North Dakota Quarterly, South Dakota Review, The South Carolina Review, The Chattahoochee Review, Sycamore Review, Permafrost, redivider, Literary Orphans, and Literal Latte.