The fatigue artist

the long version

From the acclaimed author of Leaving Brooklyn and Disturbances in the Field comes a sophisticated, droll novel that confirms Lynne Sharon Schwartz as one of our most astute observers of urban life's ragged frontiers. At age forty, Laura is struggling with the violent death of her reporter husband in a New York City drug bust, as well as her obsessive on-and-off love affair with a quixotic actor, when she is suddenly beset by a mysterious lethargy - a love affair with her bed, as she puts it. After Western medicine - hilariously satirized - yields no help with her chronic fatigue virus, she seeks its causes in her recent past and its cure in an enchanting alternative healer fittingly called The Witch. A writer herself, Laura takes solace, and ultimately finds meaning, in recording her encounters with a motley array of strangers, friends, and lovers. These perfectly rendered scenes of human frailty, bafflement, and valor in the face of private and public chaos take the reader on an extraordinary journey: from Tai Chi classes along the Hudson River to local New York hangouts to the beaches and shifting tides of Cape Cod.