Review: Sophie Mackintosh's 'Permanence' Explores Adultery in Alternate World

Permanence by Sophie Mackintosh review – high-concept adultery fable

Unfaithful lovers escape to an uncanny alternate world, in this compelling allegory for infidelity and desire Sophie Mackintosh has established a reputation for speculative literary fiction about young women’s desires and suffering at the hands of men. Her new novel, Permanence, is less plainly political than earlier work, concerned more with allegories of desire than oppression. The novel begins in an uncanny hotel, where Clara wakes beside her lover, Francis. Clara works desultorily in an a...

By Sarah Moss