The End of Getting Lost

Kirman’s skillful sophomore effort (after Bradstreet Gate) centers on a honeymooning couple’s love and deception. The story opens with Gina Reinhold, a professional dancer in New York, and Duncan Lowy, a composer, at a lake outside of Zurich in the summer of 1996, on a delayed honeymoon a year after their wedding, with Gina recuperating from a head injury she’d suffered in Berlin. Weeks later, she still can’t recall her accidental fall outside their hotel, or the months leading up to the trip, but in the aftermath of her hospitalization she feels closer to Duncan, who’s loved her since they met at Yale several years earlier. They set off for Vienna, though Kirman creates an unsettling sense that all is not what it seems. The trip is funded by a mysterious commission from a young woman, Duncan’s first major payday for his musical work; and a man named Graham Bonafair is urgently trying to reach them. In Vienna, Gina finds letters she’d written to her father and best friend that Duncan never sent, in which she writes that her marriage had collapsed. As Gina’s memories re-emerge, Duncan’s elaborate ruse unfolds. Kirman keeps up the suspense, though the action gets a little bonkers as Duncan grows increasingly desperate. This twisty page-turner delivers. Agent: Adam Eaglin, the Loft Literary Center. (Jan.)