The Limit

A brief, potent, and audaciously written novel about a husband caring for his dying wife, and the shifting nature of their relationship as the end approaches.

Anna has married an Italian seaman, Ilario. Beginning—and ending—at a point shortly before her death, the story told in The Limit draws upon her past and his future to focus attention, with increasing intensity, along the lines of narrowing perspective. In each chapter, dying becomes an appraisal of memory, a confession, perhaps, of secrets shred and not shared. In the ten years of the couple's marriage, the limits of devotion had somehow to be reached. And yet, when Anna can no longer speak, appears to understand nothing, Ilario feels at his closest to her: Anna, so old, ill, and wasted, is a child again.

The Limit, inevitably, is not about dying, but living. To read it is to have one’s perception and humanity heightened.

English novelist Rosalind Belben was born in Dorset, where she still lives. Her novel Our Horses in Egypt won the James Tait Black Award in 2007. Her other novels include Hound Music, Choosing Spectacles, and Is Beauty Good.

Paul Griffiths is a Welsh novelist, librettist, and music critic. His novel Mr. Beethoven was published by New York Review Books in 2021. He lives in the village of Manorbier, Wales.