The kept man

Jarvis Miller has spent six years at the bedside of her husband, a promising artist who has been in a coma since his career was only beginning to take off. What began as hope that he would wake and their life together would resume has worn down into something closer to resignation. To pay for the machines keeping him alive, she has been selling his paintings one by one, and she has come to face the truth that she is waiting for him to die.

One spring morning at the neighborhood laundromat, Jarvis falls in with the Kept Man Club, three charming and intelligent men whose wives earn the household income. They meet every week on laundry day, and their friendship shows her the kind of family and companionship she has gone without for years. Meanwhile, her husband's closest friend and his art dealer want her to gather the rest of his work for a retrospective, an honor usually given only to artists who have died, which leaves her torn.

While sorting through a concealed box of photographs, Jarvis finds proof of a betrayal that undermines the picture of the past she has held onto. Narrated in a sparse, gripping voice, this is a character-driven novel about love, grief and the stories people tell themselves, written by Jami Attenberg.