Life / Insurance

The narrator of this spare novella is a collage artist trying to piece together a life. Her husband is a composer who is unable to talk. Even so, she keeps asking him questions, trying to figure out what he can remember, what he did, what he wants, what he means. But then she, in turn, is interrogated by the authorities, who want to know what happened here. Everyone waits for answers. How to compensate for this disaster? What are the chances of survival? Is there solace in converting life into language? What to believe? In prose that is sometimes suspenseful, sometimes meditative, sometimes provocative, LIFE / INSURANCE is a portrait of an artist confronting the problems of existence, knowledge, language, and New York City.

Tara Deal is the author of the award-winning novellas That Night Alive (Miami University Press) and Palms Are Not Trees After All (Texas Review Press). She lives in New York City.